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- Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison plans to tear down his $80 million Palm Beach mansion.
- He told employees that he became a resident of Hawaii last year and has no plans to move back.
- Ellison owns 98% of the island of Lanai, Hawaii's smallest inhabited island.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Larry Ellison is staying in Hawaii full time – and knocking down the $80 million Palm Beach mansion he just bought.
The Oracle billionaire sent an email to employees this week explaining his future plans after reports surfaced that he had purchased a 15,000-square-foot home in South Florida. Ellison confirmed that he had purchased the mansion, but that he's "tearing the house down and not moving to Florida," according to Recode's Theodore Schleifer.
"Last year I moved from California to the island of Lana'i and became a resident of the State of Hawaii," Ellison wrote. "I love it here and have no plans to move back to Florida, Texas, back to California … or anywhere else."
Ellison's home in Palm Beach sits on 7.35 acres, making it the third-largest oceanfront parcel of land in Palm Beach County, according to a real estate listing. The Tuscan-style home, which previously belonged to hedge-fund manager Gabe Hoffman, includes seven bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and three half-bathrooms, a VIP guest suite, a home theater, a wine room, a chef's kitchen, a swimming pool, and a tennis court.
The home was built in 1998, and it's unclear why Ellison would want to knock it down. Ellison already has an extensive real estate portfolio that includes multimillion-dollar homes in San Francisco, Malibu, Lake Tahoe, Rhode Island, and Japan.
But it seems the tech mogul, who's worth $91.5 billion, has no plans to live in the mansion, or anywhere else in the contiguous United States.
Ellison revealed last year that he had moved to Lanai, Hawaii, amid the coronavirus pandemic. He plans to use "the power of Zoom to work" from the island, he wrote in an email to Oracle employees at the time, who had been asking about Ellison's plans in the wake of Oracle moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.
Ellison purchased nearly 98% of the island of Lanai in 2012 for a reported $300 million - his purchase included 87,000 of the island's 90,000 acres of land. Lanai, which is home to about 3,200 residents, is the smallest inhabited island in Hawaii and is home to serene beaches, rugged terrain, high-end resorts, as well as Ellison's sustainability ambitions, which he's executing through a development company called Pulama Lanai.
He also launched a wellness company called Sensei in 2018, which is working on three main issues: global food supply, nutrition, and sustainability. Sensei has since launched two 20,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouses on the island, known as Sensei Farms, and a luxury spa called Sensei Retreat that costs $3,000 a night.