Oracle's Larry Ellison hails Musk, Zuckerberg and Altman as 'smartest engineers' amid AI rush

The world's second-wealthiest person says AI is the 'largest, fastest-growing business in human history'

Oracle executive chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison appeared on a live stream to deliver his keynote at the AI World conference in Las Vegas. Alvin R Cabral / The National

If there's one thing artificial intelligence changed, it's Larry Ellison's mind. He also thinks three of his peers in Big Tech are the “smartest engineers” around.

The Oracle boss let his thoughts loose in a wide-ranging, 90-minute keynote at the company's AI World conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, in which he declared AI as a business for the ages.

The 81-year-old Mr Ellison, who swapped an onstage appearance for a live stream instead, said he wasn't so sure about AI several years ago.

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“Is AI the most important technology in human history? Uh, dot, dot, dot, we're going to find out soon,” he claimed to have said at that time.

“Well, it's pretty clear … it's very apparent after a few years of [AI], it's the largest, fastest growing business in human history.”

'New world dawning'

Mr Ellison, who cofounded Texas-based Oracle in 1977 and who is at present its executive chairman and chief technology officer, said the AI boom is “a whole new world that is dawning”, underpinned by the benefits the technology has brought – even implying that it will surpass humans in certain aspects.

“It's bigger than the railroads, bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” he said. “These remarkable electronic brains will be able to solve humanity's most difficult and enduring problems.”

In medicine, for example, AI has the potential to hasten the early detection of cancers, and “robots will be much better surgeons than human beings can be”, as AI models become more advanced.

However, he made it clear that while AI will become more superior, he believes humans will remain the main drivers of society.

“People think some people think it's going to replace all human beings and all of our human endeavours. I don't think that's true,” he said.

“It will help us solve problems we couldn't solve on our own. It will make us much better scientists, engineers, teachers, chefs, bricklayers, surgeons, and what have you.”

'Extraordinary people'

Mr Ellison listed Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Meta Platforms boss Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI leader Sam Altman as the “smartest engineers I know”, crediting them with their vision in their respective fields that have all converged into the present-day AI.

Mr Musk, the world's wealthiest individual – Mr Ellison is second – put electric vehicles on the map, Mr Zuckerberg sowed the seeds for the social media frenzy with Facebook and Mr Altman mainstreamed AI with ChatGPT.

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Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg have been heavily investing in AI, a clear sign of the technology's viability and potential, Mr Ellison said.

“They are all really smart guys, extraordinary people … [their efforts] paid off nicely,” he said.

“There'll be people spending money on AI, because almost every tech company these days call themselves an AI company … in terms of its value, this is the highest value technology we have ever seen by far.”

Top-ranked AI models

Mr Ellison listed OpenAI's GPT-5, Google's Gemini 2.5, xAI's Grok 4 and Meta Llama 4 as the “top-ranked” AI models, calling them multimodal that is key for technologies like the cloud.

Demand for AI continues to exceed supply, which means the responsibility falls on AI model service providers to continue their development and improve on capabilities, he said.

“We are participants in creating AI technology, and we're also participants in using that technology to solve problems in different ecosystems and industries,” Mr Ellison said.

He also argued that, for generative AI be more enhanced, private data needs to be included in its training – but it has to be done in a secure manner, just like how companies gathering information are supposed to handle it.

“If you look at [generative AI models], they're all trained on all of the data on the internet,” he said.

“But for these models to reach their peak value, you need to not train them not just on publicly available data – you need to make privately-owned data available to those models as well.”

Controversial figure

Mr Ellison, while having a lower profile compared to other tech billionaires, is also a controversial figure.

Behind the scenes, he is very influential. A big supporter of US President Donald Trump, he is part of a deal spurred by the US government to take an ownership in controversial Chinese app TikTok's US operations.

He is also reportedly pursuing deals to buy into CBS, Paramount and Trump critic CNN, as he makes inroads into the media world, similar to what Amazon founder did with his purchase of The Washington Post. Mr Ellison's son, David, is a producer in Hollywood.

Mr Ellison's past controversies include hiring a private firm to snoop on Microsoft and calling Google “absolutely evil” over the Android operating system.

He last year described a future where everyone, including law enforcement will face regular surveillance where “citizens will be on their best behaviour”, reported Fortune.

Still, he rarely discusses these in public and has let his business – and visionary – side do the talking. He has also made charitable donations and is outspoken on advancing health care.

“We attack the problems, not just as automating a hospital or clinic, but automating the entire ecosystem,” he said.

“Those are the kinds of enormous productivity gains you get when you use these incredible AI tools.”