Originally published in April, our look at Ellison’s Palm Beach world takes on new resonance as he prepares to reshape Hollywood with the Paramount deal. This is an excerpt from PALMER Vol.7. To read the full story, purchase your copy of the magazine here.
It’s been quite a year for Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle, who is now the third richest person in the world.
In 2024, Oracle’s stock shot up 63%, vastly outpacing the S&P 500’s 27% gain. As its largest shareholder, the increase in the company’s stock added some $75 billion to Ellison’s already enormous wealth. (According to Forbes, his net worth is now $209 billion.) Last year, the Ellisons—father Larry and his only son, David—also struck a still-pending deal to take control of Paramount Global, the publicly traded parent company of the CBS television network, the Paramount movie studio, and the cable channels MTV and Nickelodeon, among others, and Paramount+, the company’s struggling streaming business. David took the lead on negotiating the $8 billion or so deal to acquire the Redstone family’s controlling stake in National Amusements, which owns the largest voting stake in Paramount Global, and to merge his SkyDance Media into Paramount in a complex deal that leaves Paramount a publicly traded company; however, it was generally understood that David could not have pulled off the deal, either financially or reputationally, without the explicit backing of his father.
Then, in one of the crazier stories of the year, Larry provided the pocket change—for him, anyway—of somewhere, reportedly, between $10 million and $12 million over four years to convince star high school quarterback Bryce Underwood to change his commitment to play football at the University of Michigan, from his previous commitment to Louisiana State University. It was all part of the curious developments in the world of NIL—name, image, and likeness—and college sports, where deep pockets often prevail in luring talent. But why, sports wags wanted to know, was Ellison behind the Underwood shenanigans? He dropped out of the University of Chicago after one semester, and appeared to have nothing to do with the University of Michigan. Since then, it has been revealed that Ellison provided the NIL money in support of someone named “Jolin.” That moniker turned out to be short for 33-year-old Keren Zhu, also known as Jolin Zhu, a 2012 graduate of the University of Michigan—and the 80-year-old Ellison’s new wife. What we do for love!
Then, somehow, in the middle of vastly increasing his net worth, working behind the scenes to help his son get control of Paramount Global, and getting married for the fifth time, Ellison also managed to make a big splash in Palm Beach, with his $277.4-million purchase of the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, a 309-unit oceanfront resort in Manalapan. Speculation on what his investment would mean to Palm Beach started immediately.
When Ellison sets his sights on something, he doesn’t go halfway. Few in the world of international yacht racing can forget the money and effort he put into winning the 2013 America’s Cup sailing regatta, using innovative wing-sail catamarans, and how he brought renewed attention to the sport—or how he pulled off a stunning, come-from-behind victory. In Malibu, Ellison has nearly commandeered the place, buying at least a dozen homes, as well as Nobu Ryokan Malibu, formerly the Casa Malibu Inn, and the Malibu Racquet Club. (As of press time, it is unclear if any of Ellison’s Malibu properties were damaged in the Los Angeles Palisades fire.)
Now, Palm Beach is his latest conquest. Ellison’s acquisition of Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa follows his purchase, in 2022, of a $173 million estate on the island, at the time the highest price paid for a home in Florida. But few around town know just what his plans are for the Eau. (Neither Ellison nor his representatives at Oracle responded to a request for an interview.) Wilbur Ross, the former Commerce Secretary in the first Trump Administration and a Palm Beach homeowner since 2003, says “people are curious” about Ellison’s next move. He’s not that surprised that Ellison lighted on Manalapan, the neighboring town to the south of Palm Beach: “There have always been some very big estates in Manalapan, and the values in recent years have been a fraction of the values in Palm Beach. So it is certainly getting some of the overflow at the high end.”
According to Forbes, there are now more than 60 billionaires in the Palm Beach area. It’s no longer just the zillionaire Larry Ellisons and Ken Griffins of the world who have landed in Palm Beach. It’s also the likes of Steve Wynn, who has bought and sold numerous properties, and Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire founder of Interactive Brokers.
The barrier island serves up a tasty bouillabaisse of a combination of low taxes, delightful weather, improving educational options for families, such as Bill Koch’s Oxbridge Academy, Jeff Greene’s The Greene School, and Palm Beach Day Academy, and a less intrusive government that has somehow found a way to maintain the low “mill rate” on real-estate on the island. Much to the delight of many, the local government has been fiscally responsible. There’s also less crime and homelessness than the big cities. And the Palm Beach authorities are security-conscious, which is increasingly a concern among the über rich as they go about their daily lives. A planned protest over the 2020 election was stymied when, reportedly, Palm Beach simply raised the drawbridge between the island and the mainland.
Add to this the influx of new quality restaurants in both Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, including the 65-seat Nobu Manalapan at Ellison’s resort, and the improving cultural scene, in particular with the Norman Foster–designed 59,000 square-foot addition to the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, and potentially another 100,000 square-foot addition on the way for traveling exhibitions.
Ross notes that while Palm Beach has always attracted the privileged set, they have mostly been “trust fund” types. No longer. “Now, most of the people buying the big houses are self-made people.” “There’s been a whole change in that regard. You still have an awful lot of people now who are actively working, and that’s a different environment. It’s not just a retirement environment. What’s unusual is to find a substantial person here who’s not doing something. Back in the old days, I would go, say, to the B&T, and if you look in the library, there would be a guy hunched over doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. Two years before, he had been a hard-charging CEO, now he got reduced to the New York Times crossword puzzle. You don’t see that anymore.”