Larry Ellison is either building the backbone of the AI century—or setting himself up as its biggest "cautionary tale," according to a sweeping New York Times investigation. The story looks at how the 81-year-old Oracle founder, who was briefly the richest person in the world last year, has become the "most vulnerable player" in an increasingly shaky AI race. Oracle has borrowed staggering sums to crank out mega-data centers in Texas, Malaysia, and the Persian Gulf, betting that whoever owns the most computing power will own the future. The Times details how Ellison's scramble to turn Oracle into a "hyperscaler" began after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, which he saw as the dawn of a new age in tech.
And all this is unfolding while analysts question whether the "scaling" theory of AI returns actually holds up, as the story details. Meanwhile, Oracle's debt has been downgraded to one notch above junk status, its stock has plunged roughly 60% from its peak last year, and Ellison's own net worth has shrunk by $200 billion since September. In the end, it all may pay off, or fail, spectacularly. The story, though, sees the AI boom as risky not just to Ellison but to the US economy as a whole. The authors suggest an AI crash could wipe out more US wealth than the infamous dot-com crash or the more recent 2008 financial crisis. Read the full story by Jonathan Mahler, Jim Rutenberg, and Kirsten Grind.
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