Oracle founder Larry Ellison moves to Hawaii

Larry Ellison, one of the world’s wealthiest, has moved to Hawaii from California. He is one of the latest billionaires to leave California in 2020. He has opted from Silicon Valley but won’t be moving to Texas with his company. The Silicon Valley-based provider of business software stated that it would relocate its headquarters to Austin, Texas. Oracle would keep an office in Silicon Valley and allow its workers to choose a location to work, possibly from home.

Being the founder of the software giant Oracle, Ellison disclosed to his employees in a company-wide note on Monday afternoon after Oracle announced that it was moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas. “Following Friday’s announcement … I’ve received several inquiries about whether or not I will be moving to Texas,” Ellison wrote. “The answer is no. I’ve moved to the state of Hawaii, announcement, and I’ll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai,” he added, signing off the email with a “Mahalo.”

Ellison owns most of Lanai’s island, and like most tech billionaires, he has been trying to develop the land as an environmental and agricultural utopia. He purchased the island for $500 million in 2012, two years before he stepped down as Oracle’s CEO. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Ellison, 76, owns 98% of Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth-largest island. The island is mostly made up of Ellison’s luxury hotels and resorts, with him being Lanai’s 3,000 residents’ primary employer. Along with his three hotels, he also owns a significant chunk of the housing stock, the main grocery store, and the monthly newspaper in Lanai. He recently launched a wellness company based in Lanai called Sensei, where his business and philanthropic decisions heavily shape the remote island. In recent weeks, Ellison’s allies and corporations have managed a coronavirus outbreak on the island.

Ellison’s decamping announcement comes just days after Elon Musk, one of his closest friends and associate, confirmed that he had moved to Texas because of Tesla’s and SpaceX’s business operations. California’s business climate and tax policies have created discontent among several tech billionaires and, this would undoubtedly matter to someone like Ellison, whose net worth is more than $80 billion. And now, with Covid-related restrictions and modifications, California has been more stringent than the rest of the states.

Ellison ranks #7 on the Forbes’ Billionaires list, where Jeff Bezos ranks at the top, having a net worth of $182 billion. Despite Lanai being such a small island, with only one school and barely any stoplights, Lanai residents rarely see Ellison around town, though that may change now that he’s officially moving there.