FMNN INVESTIGATES · OPINION & ANALYSIS
He named his company after a CIA project and pitched AI cameras that keep citizens "on their best behavior." Now, from a record-setting Palm Beach County estate, his family controls CBS News, CNN and a piece of TikTok.
By Joseph J. Jackson | FMNN Investigates: National (Nov. 11, 2026). Reported through Nov. 4, 2026.
The short version
Oracle's first customer in 1977 was the CIA, on a database project code-named "Oracle." Larry Ellison named his company after it.
Ellison personally guaranteed $40.4 billion to help his son David's Paramount win Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal closed Oct. 6, 2026, putting CBS News and CNN under one family.
Ellison made Florida his official home after paying a state-record $173 million for an oceanfront estate in Manalapan, about 20 minutes from Mar-a-Lago.
The guarantee
On Dec. 22, 2025, Larry Ellison did something even the richest people rarely do. He signed an "irrevocable personal guarantee" for $40.4 billion. [1]
The money wasn't for Oracle, the software giant he founded. It was for his son. David Ellison's Paramount Skydance was trying to take Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix, and Warner's board had called Paramount's financing "illusory." So the father put about a sixth of his fortune on the line. [1][2] Two months later, Netflix walked away. [3] On Oct. 6, 2026, the deal closed. The combined company is now called Skydance, and it owns CBS News, CNN, HBO, two Hollywood studios and dozens of cable channels. [4]
Ellison signed for it as a Floridian. He made his $173 million estate in Manalapan, in Palm Beach County, his official residence, about 20 minutes south of the president who calls him a friend. [5][6]
Most Americans think of Larry Ellison, if they think of him at all, as the yacht-racing billionaire who sells database software. That's the cover story. The record shows a man who started in the CIA's data business, pitched a future of nonstop AI surveillance, joined a call about contesting the 2020 election, and has now put his money behind two of the country's biggest TV newsrooms.
The ledger
Said. Ellison, Sept. 2024: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on." (Documented, Tier 1: Oracle financial analyst meeting, via TechCrunch, Business Insider) [7][8]
Did. Oracle hosts TikTok's U.S. data, holds 15% of TikTok's new U.S. joint venture, and oversees the retraining of its recommendation algorithm. Ellison guaranteed $40.4 billion for his son's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and CNN. (Documented, Tier 2: Oracle SEC filing; TikTok announcement; Paramount filing) [1][9][10]
Result. One family now controls CBS News and CNN, and Ellison's company has a hand in what 200 million Americans see on TikTok. (Documented, Tier 2: The New York Times via Inquirer; Reuters) [4][11]
Gap. The man who said AI cameras would keep citizens on their "best behavior" now has a stake in the algorithm, the cable newsroom and the broadcast network. (Documented) [4][7][9]
Knew. Nov. 14, 2020, email from True the Vote's founder: "Jim was on a call this evening with Jay Sekulow, Lindsey O. Graham, Sean Hannity, and Larry Ellison." (Documented, Tier 1: court filing, via The Washington Post and Reuters) [12][13]
Said after. David Ellison on CNN: "We absolutely believe in the independence that needs to be maintained." (Documented, Tier 1: CNBC interview, March 2026, via Inquirer) [14]
The 2020 email is Tier 1. It was written the night of the call and entered into a federal court record.
What you need to know
This is an opinion and analysis piece. It argues that Larry Ellison has quietly assembled more control over what Americans see, hear and share than any private citizen in modern memory, and that his closeness to President Trump makes that a democracy problem, not just a business story. Every fact under that argument comes from the record. Where the record is disputed, we say so.
A fair warning up front: David Ellison, not Larry, runs Skydance and makes its news decisions. And Larry Ellison has never publicly questioned the 2020 results. Both are true. Both appear below.
Chicago
Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born Aug. 17, 1944, in New York City, to an unmarried teenage mother, Florence Spellman. At nine months old he was adopted by her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison, and raised in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. [15][16] They didn't tell him he was adopted until he was 12. [15]
He attended the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago and finished at neither. His adoptive father, by Ellison's own account, was convinced he'd never make anything of himself. [16][17] In 1966 he went to California and started writing code.
Project Oracle
At Ampex, in the mid-1970s, Ellison's first big assignment was a database for the CIA. Its code name was Oracle. [16]
In 1977 he joined his Ampex boss Bob Miner and Ed Oates at a new company, Software Development Laboratories. Their first client was the CIA. They finished Project Oracle a year early, which helped them land their next government client, the National Security Agency. [18][19] They built a commercial product from an IBM research paper, named it after the CIA job, and in 1982 renamed the company Oracle Systems. [18][19] Air Force bases and intelligence agencies were among the first buyers. [17]
Oracle went public in 1986. Ellison still owns about 41% of it. [9]
That's the origin, and it matters for what came next. From day one, Oracle's business was organizing information about people for the most powerful institutions in the country.
"Best behavior"
In September 2024, at a meeting with Wall Street analysts, Ellison described the future he wants Oracle to power: AI watching a constant stream of video from police body cameras, car cameras, doorbells and drones. "We're going to have supervision," he said. "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on." [7][8]
He also said police would behave better because they'd be watched. TechCrunch noted that the research doesn't clearly support his claim that blanket surveillance cuts crime. [7]
Oracle has a track record on personal data. In 2024 it paid $115 million to settle a class action accusing it of building "digital dossiers" on hundreds of millions of people, covering where they browsed, banked, bought gas, ate and shopped, and selling them to marketers. Oracle denied wrongdoing, agreed to stop certain tracking and got out of the ad-tech business. [20][21]
The algorithm
Since 2022, Oracle has stored Americans' TikTok data on its servers. [10] On Jan. 22, 2026, the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture closed. Oracle, the private-equity firm Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi-backed AI fund MGX each own 15%; TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, keeps 19.9%. [9][22]
Oracle's job is the heart of it. The company hosts U.S. user data on its cloud, audits compliance, and oversees the retraining of the recommendation algorithm, the code that decides what about 200 million Americans see. [11][23] ByteDance still owns and licenses the core algorithm, and a group of software engineers has sued, arguing the deal doesn't satisfy the 2024 law. [9][23]
So the man who said constant recording keeps citizens on their best behavior now has a seat at the table deciding what's in America's most addictive feed.
The richest man, briefly
Ellison's fortune exploded with AI. In September 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had signed a deal to buy about $300 billion in computing power from Oracle over roughly five years, part of the Stargate AI build-out. [24][26] Oracle's stock jumped more than 40% in a day, and Ellison's net worth rose by about $89 billion, the biggest one-day gain Bloomberg had ever recorded. For a few hours he passed Elon Musk as the richest person on Earth. [25][26]
He's also Musk's ally. Ellison pledged $1 billion toward Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022. [27]
The call
On Nov. 14, 2020, a week after Joe Biden won, Ellison joined a phone call with Sen. Lindsey Graham, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and Jim Bopp, a lawyer for the group True the Vote, which was pushing claims of election fraud. The Washington Post found it through a court filing: True the Vote's founder emailed a donor that night describing who was on the line. [12][13] A participant told the Post the call was about strategies for contesting the result, and that Ellison may have been brought in to weigh claims about voting machines. [12][28]
Bopp told the Post the call was about whether congressional hearings would be useful. Graham's spokesman, asked why Ellison was invited, said: "Probably because Ellison supported Trump." [28] Ellison has never publicly questioned the 2020 results, and he didn't donate to or endorse Trump in 2024, CNN reported. [12][29]
Buying the newsrooms
CBS. In 2024, Trump sued CBS for $10 billion, later raised to $20 billion, over how 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. First Amendment experts called the suit frivolous. [30] Paramount needed the Trump administration's Federal Communications Commission to approve its sale to David Ellison's Skydance. In July 2025, Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle. [31] Days after Stephen Colbert called the settlement "a big fat bribe" on air, CBS canceled The Late Show, citing finances. [32] About three weeks after the settlement, the FCC approved the $8 billion merger, 2–1. Chairman Brendan Carr praised Skydance's commitment to "significant changes" at CBS and its promise to hire an ombudsman and end diversity programs. [31][33] The FCC transferred CBS's station licenses to Larry Ellison and his family. [33]
Then David Ellison bought The Free Press for about $150 million and named its founder, Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, reporting directly to him. [34][35]
CNN. Warner Bros. Discovery agreed in December 2025 to sell its studios and HBO to Netflix for about $83 billion, with CNN spun off on its own. [36] Trump said that in any deal, CNN had to change hands. [37] Paramount went hostile, backed by Larry Ellison's guarantee and about $24 billion from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, plus Jared Kushner's investment firm. [1][38] The Guardian reported that Larry Ellison discussed with Trump which CNN anchors the president wanted fired, and that Trump named Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. [39] The Wall Street Journal reported that David Ellison assured Trump he would make "sweeping changes" at CNN. [40] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, angry about CNN's war coverage, said: "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better." [14][41]
The Justice Department approved the deal in June. [14] State attorneys general sued and settled for an editorial independence board at CNN and a promise to spend $1.5 billion more on movies. The deal closed Oct. 6. [4]
Florida
Ellison bought an $80 million North Palm Beach estate in 2021 and said he planned to tear it down. In 2022 he paid $173 million for Gemini, a 16-acre oceanfront compound in Manalapan, the most ever paid for a home in Florida. [5][42] In 2024 he paid $277 million for the town's biggest building, the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, bringing his local real estate to about $450 million, Fortune reported. [43] He declared Florida his residence, which has no state income tax, in 2023. [6]
So Florida is now home to Ellison, to Peter Thiel and Palantir in Miami, and to Elon Musk's rockets on the Space Coast. (See FMNN's investigations of Musk and Thiel.)
RELATED: The Seeing Stone: How Peter Thiel Built a Business Watching You · The Price List: Who Pays for the Politics in Your Feed
Reality of the situation
What his defenders say: David runs the company, not Larry. CNN has an independence board. Paramount won a fair auction. The CBS settlement wasn't an apology. Larry didn't even back Trump in 2024.
What the record says:
"David runs it, not Larry." True on the org chart. But Larry's personal guarantee made the Warner deal possible, and the FCC transferred CBS's licenses to "Larry Ellison and his family." [1][33]
"CNN's independence is protected." Partly true. An independence board exists because state attorneys general sued for one. [4] Weiss, who runs CBS News, reports straight to the CEO. [35] Whether the board holds is something viewers will see on air.
"It was a fair auction." Partly true. Paramount did outbid Netflix. [3] It also bid with Gulf royal money, a Kushner fund and a president publicly demanding CNN change owners. [37][38]
"The settlement wasn't a bribe." Disputed. Paramount said it wasn't apologizing, and the FCC chairman denied any link. [31] It came three weeks before approval, after a lawsuit experts called frivolous. [30][33] Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it possible "bribery in plain sight." [32]
"Ellison didn't support Trump in 2024." True, per CNN. [29] He was on the November 2020 call, Trump calls him a friend, and he moved 20 minutes from Mar-a-Lago. [6][12][33]
Voices of resistance
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez cast the only vote against the CBS deal. "After months of cowardly capitulation to this administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted," she said. "Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions." [44] She was one commissioner against two. She said it anyway, on the record, against the president's FCC.
Reading the pattern
The official story. A software pioneer whose son is saving Hollywood.
The record. A business born in the CIA's files, a founder who wants AI to watch everyone, a seat on a call about contesting an election, and a family that now owns the newsrooms that report on all of it.
Who carried the story
The Washington Post found Ellison's name in the True the Vote court filing in May 2022. [12] Reuters' Jonathan Stempel reported Oracle's $115 million privacy settlement. [20] CNN's Brian Stelter, who now works for a network the Ellisons own, broke down the Weiss hire. [34] The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal reported the Ellisons' conversations with Trump about CNN. [39][40]
Closing
The CIA called its project Oracle. In Greek myth, the oracle was where powerful men went to learn what was coming, and the priests decided what the answer would be.
Larry Ellison took the name in 1977. Nearly fifty years later, from a beach house in Palm Beach County, his family decides what goes on CBS, what goes on CNN, and helps decide what goes on your phone. The question for every viewer is the oldest one there is: who's writing the answers?
FMNN asked Oracle and Skydance for comment before publication. Any response will be added here.
Also from FMNN Investigates: The Seeing Stone: How Peter Thiel Built a Business Watching You
Sources
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AP via ClickOnDetroit (see 33), Commissioner Anna Gomez statement.
Updates and corrections
No corrections as of publication.
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