From AI to TikTok to TV, This Pro-Israel Billionaire Is Expanding Power in US

One of Trump’s advisers once called megabillionaire Larry Ellison a “shadow president of the United States.”

By Derek Seidman , Truthout, October 11, 2025

arry Ellison’s name isn’t always mentioned alongside more public-facing megabillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg. But as he vaults to the top of the U.S. power elite after a string of high-profile corporate deals, that’s about to change.

Ellison, the founder of the tech giant Oracle, is quickly emerging as the new face of oligarchic power in the U.S. Oracle has become an AI powerhouse at the same time Ellison and his son David have acquired Paramount and its vast media empire. With Donald Trump’s recent executive order, Ellison and Oracle will also now oversee TikTok’s algorithms, shaping a platform that reaches 150 million U.S. users.

What’s more alarming than Ellison’s sheer wealth — in September, he briefly surpassed Musk as the world’s richest person — is that he’s building his concentrated power and control in collaboration with the Trumpian project of attacking so-called “wokeness,” all while supercharging the corporate expansion of artificial intelligence and tech surveillance.

Moreover, Ellison is a vocal supporter of the Israeli military and a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Israel looks to repair its image after two years of overseeing a genocide in Gaza, it’ll have a powerful booster in Ellison and his new media kingdom.

The Making of a Megabillionaire

Larry Ellison founded Oracle in 1977 and was its CEO for nearly four decades. The firm ascended by providing database software for business and government agencies. Oracle’s first customer was the CIA, and the company is named after a CIA project.

Over time, Oracle has swelled into a business empire focused on cloud services and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

Today, Ellison is worth more than $350 billion. He owns more than 40 percent of Oracle’s stock and still serves as the corporation’s executive chairman and chief technology officer. Ellison was also on Tesla’s board of directors from 2018 to 2022 and holds a 1.4 percent stake in the company that’s worth billions…………………………………..

Trump-Tied AI Deals

But far more than wealth and luxury, Ellison has power. Notably, he’s forged a close relationship with Donald Trump, with one Trump adviser calling him a “shadow president of the United States.”

While Ellison hasn’t directly donated to Trump, he personally hosted a major 2020 Trump fundraiser. Ellison also joined a November 2020 call “where Trump staffers and supporters discussed strategies for challenging their candidate’s loss at the ballot box,” according to The Washington Post………………………………..

A huge swath of Oracle’s AI business comes from a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Oracle’s partnership with OpenAI was supercharged by Trump’s announcement in January of the Stargate AI joint venture, which The New York Times called an “early trophy” for Trump.

Indeed, Stargate is just one expression of the mutually beneficial alliance that Ellison has forged with Trump. Oracle’s expanding partnership with OpenAI reflects a new primacy for Ellison within the AI boom that is increasingly driving the entire U.S. economy.

Media Mogul

This should raise alarm bells, especially since Ellison has openly celebrated AI’s ability to surveil people, pronouncing in 2024 that “citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”

Ellison’s alliance with Trump is also transforming him into an unrivaled media mogul…………………………………………………………………………………..

The Ellisons’ quest for media dominance doesn’t end with Paramount. They’re reportedly eying Warner Brothers, the iconic movie studio and owner of CNN and HBO. Such an acquisition, which would need the Trump administration’s approval, would create a media empire transcending even Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate.

And then came the TikTok deal…………………………………………………………………………………..

For Ellison, all his new acquisitions present the opportunity to forge a truly novel corporate mega-empire that will dominate the U.S. media and attention economy, injecting his agenda like a thread across an AI-powered chain of news outlets, streaming sites, film studios, and social media outlets.

“We Love the Country of Israel”

“These are very smart people, and none of this is accidental,” noted one business professor.

All of this is very good for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s vast influence operation.

Ellison is a staunch backer of Israel. He is one of the top donors to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), a U.S. nonprofit that effectively subsidizes the Israeli military. Ellison has given the FIDF at least $26.6 million.

“I feel a deep emotional connection to the State of Israel and the Israeli people,” Ellison said at the 2014 FIDF gala. “We love the country of Israel and we’ll do everything we can to support the country of Israel,” he added, with his “we” seeming to refer to Oracle.

Ellison is also extremely close to Netanyahu, who has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court over Israel’s genocide in Gaza………………………………………………………..

Ellison is also a backer of former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and has given or pledged at least $348 million to Blair’s Institute for Global Change. Blair could be part of Trump’s “Board of Peace” in Gaza if the current ceasefire deal holds.

…………………………………………………… Netanyahu recently called TikTok “the most important purchase going on right now,” adding that “weapons change over time,” and the most important ones today “are on social media.”

Now Oracle, led by Netanyahu’s friend and staunch ally Larry Ellison, is overseeing TikTok’s U.S. algorithms.

There are already clear signs of Ellison’s intent to take his new media empire in a pro-Israel direction, including his hiring of Weiss as CBS News’s editor-in-chief. The billionaire-courting Weiss is a staunch Zionist whose Free Press has stoked “genocide denial” with an “investigation” into “preexisting health conditions” of starving Palestinian children, notes The Intercept.

Modern-Day Robber Baron

Like the robber barons of the late 19th-century U.S., Ellison is consolidating his control over a vast corporate empire that dominates major sectors, from cloud storage and AI data centers, to iconic movie studios, mass news channels, and social media.

And clearly, Ellison is bringing his politics with him: Trump-aligned, anti-“woke,” and staunchly pro-Israel.

“Everything is consolidating,” media historian Michael Socolow told The New York Times. “What makes these deals different is that they are across multiple platforms.”

“To have the opportunity to establish an editorial line across TikTok, CBS News and CNN — that’s a new world,” Socolow added. https://truthout.org/articles/from-ai-to-tiktok-to-tv-this-pro-israel-billionaire-is-expanding-power-in-us/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=314e14bc07-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_10_11_06_41&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-314e14bc07-650192793