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- Oracle founder Larry Ellison has moved to Lanai, the Hawaiian island he mostly owns.
- Ellison revealed his move in an email to employees on Monday, which was first reported by Recode.
- Ellison said he has received questions about where he planned to live after Oracle confirmed it was moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
- “I’ve moved to the state of Hawaii and I’ll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai,” Ellison wrote, signing the email “Mahalo.”
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Larry Ellison has decamped from Silicon Valley – but he’s not moving to Texas with his company, Oracle.
The billionaire Oracle founder has moved to Hawaii, he announced in an email to Oracle staff on Monday afternoon. The email was posted by several accounts on Twitter and reported by Recode’s Teddy Schleifer.
Ellison’s announcement follows Oracle’s confirmation last week that it’s moving its corporate headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas. Ellison said in the email he has received “a number of inquiries” from employees asking whether he planned to move to Texas as well. (Ellison owns a 23-acre estate in Woodside, California, as well as a home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.)
“The answer is no,” Ellison wrote. “I’ve moved to the state of Hawaii and I’ll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai.”
He signed the email: “Mahalo, Larry.”
A spokesperson for Oracle did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on Ellison's move.
Ellison paid $300 million for 90,000 acres on Lanai in 2012, and it's estimated that he owns 98% of the island. Ellison refurbished hotels on Lanai - there are two separate Four Seasons Resorts - and invested in clean energy with the intention of turning the island into something resembling a sustainability laboratory.
The island is one piece of Ellison's staggering real estate portfolio, which also includes properties in Japan and Malibu, as well as the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Ellison, who is 76, is the 11th-richest person in the world with a net worth that tops $74 billion, according to Bloomberg.