Larry Ellison Steps Back from Oracle Spotlight as AI Pivot Takes Over
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Larry Ellison has been absent from Oracle’s earnings calls this year, Bloomberg reported, and the company is billing next month’s user conference keynotes without him. He has been Oracle’s public face since he founded it, and stayed there after giving up the chief executive title in 2014.
Clay Magouyrk joined in 2014, the year Ellison gave up the chief executive job, and built the cloud that has run a separate EU sovereign region since 2023.
September 12, 2026 – 4:50 pm
Larry Ellison at the Oracle OpenWorld keynote in San Francisco on 30 September 2014, twelve days after he gave up the chief executive title.
Credit: Oracle PR / Hartmann Studios / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Ellison is 82. He remains chairman and chief technology officer, owning about 40% of the stock, so his influence persists.
What has changed, however, is the explaining. Oracle has more to explain now that it:
- Is spending $2.8B on job cuts
- Is borrowing to build data centers
- Has seen its headcount fall 13% in a year
In Europe, the handover is significant. Magouyrk built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure out to more than 100 public regions, including an EU Sovereign Cloud since June 2023 with regions in Frankfurt and Madrid owned by separate EU legal entities. Equinix hosts the Frankfurt region, while Digital Realty hosts Madrid.
Amazon opened its own European sovereign cloud in Brandenburg this January, two and a half years later, and its new AI assistant doesn’t appear on the published service list. Ellison never had to sell that product.
The company on stage in Las Vegas next month sells capacity, much of it to one customer, financed by borrowing that has taken Oracle to one notch above junk. That business belongs to the successors.
By Cristian Dina
CRO at The Next Web
Cristian Dina is the CRO at The Next Web. He has interviewed 300+ industry leaders and authored the book King of Networking, establishing himself as one of the most connected and respected voices in the ecosystem. At just 23 years old, Cristian was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 2025 list.