Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, became the richest man on Earth for a brief 24 hours. He temporarily shot past Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is back in the top slot and on his way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Ellison, the world’s second-richest man, is also known for looking surprisingly young at 80. Garnering praise from anti-ageing fanatic Bryan Johnson, the billionaire has been told that he looks 30 years younger.
Johnson had previously posted on X (formerly Twitter) and said that Ellison was “doing a good job managing biological ageing.” The Internet could not help but wonder if Ellison, too, was part of Johnson’s “trigenerational blood exchange” fiasco with his own son, David. But a statement from Gina Smith in 2018, the former editor-in-chief of Ellison’s NewDomain, confirmed otherwise.
In a Quora thread, Smith confirmed that Ellison does have an intense workout routine and a carefully planned diet. He reportedly exercised for several hours a day when she used to work with him, between the 1990s and 2000s. “He never drank anything other than green tea and water,” Smith said. “And he’s a so-called ‘veg-aquarian.’” Explaining the term, she said he only ate vegetables, fish, and fruit. Smith also revealed that he was known to often sip carrot juice during the day.
Fighting the inevitable and universal experience of growing old has been a project of Ellison’s for years. He’s donated over $350 million to research on aging and age-related disease. With a self-described “addiction to winning,” Ellison, the newly anointed second-richest person in the world, has applied a similar urgency to his personal health.
Mortality has perplexed Ellison for decades. His biological mother left his family when Ellison was a child, and his adoptive mother died of cancer during his time in college. Speaking to biographer Mike Wilson, Ellison had said, “Death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and then just vanish — just not be there?”
Johnson said many like Ellison who follow him, “rage against death,” and that is part of what keeps them young and vital. In fact, spitting in the eye of the Grim Reaper seems to be a thing among the uber-rich. Google co-founder Larry Page, the creator of Calico Labs, has also funded prominent anti-aging research. Promoting a study that probes into cell ageing reversal, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has created Altos Labs for the same purpose – the extension of the human lifespan. Reports also reveal that former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel took human growth hormone pills every day and has plans to be cryogenically frozen after his death.
Ellison’s impact is undeniable. He’s a visionary, a provocateur, and an icon who’s made a career out of rewriting the rules. And now? He’s taking on the ultimate challenge: making death optional.
