Who Are Larry Ellison’s Children and What Do They Do?

Larry Ellison, co-founder and longtime CEO of Oracle Corporation, has two children, David Ellison and Megan Ellison. Both grew up in California, Woodside, near San Francisco, and share a love of movies nurtured by their mother. As adults, they have each built high-profile careers in Hollywood film and media. However, they’ve been leveraging their family resources while generally staying behind the scenes. Below is a detailed look at Larry Ellison’s children, their background, education, career highlights, and personal life.

David Ellison

David Ellison was born on January 9, 1983. He has one younger sister, Megan, born in 1986. When he was about 3 years old, and Megan was just a baby, his parents divorced. David and Megan then largely grew up with their mother on a horse farm in Woodside, California. During childhood, he spent summers sailing on his father’s yacht, Ronin, and also learned to fly airplanes. He often took aerobatic flying lessons with his dad to build responsibility.

Education

David attended Sacred Heart Preparatory in Atherton. He then briefly attended Pepperdine University before transferring to the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts. At USC, David studied film but dropped out in 2005 during his senior year to make his first movie. Even in high school, he had exposure to technology as he worked at Oracle during the summer. However, his passion lay in film rather than tech.

Family Wealth and Trust Funds

His father’s business success made him extremely wealthy from a young age. For instance, Larry set up trusts for David and Megan filled with large blocks of Oracle stock. Not to mention, he later added stock in other companies like NetSuite. So, over time, the trust has made David and his sister phenomenally wealthy.

For example, Larry initially gave them 90,000 shares of Oracle at the 1986 IPO. After stock splits, this trust grew to 29.2 million shares, worth nearly $1 billion by 2013. By 2015, the siblings owned about 2.8% of Oracle, roughly $4.8 billion. This immense family fortune, often a focus of media attention, provided him with capital to finance film projects. At the same time, he has also strived to establish his reputation as a producer.

Parental Influence

David credits his mother with nurturing his love of cinema. She took the children to movie premieres every weekend and kept a home video library of thousands of films for them to watch. His father was more pragmatic, insisting early on that the kids get experience dealing with the pluses and minuses of having a lot of money. Both parents’ influences show in David. He has the business acumen of his father and a genuine passion for film like his mother.

Film Career and Business Ventures

David’s entry into Hollywood came when he financed and co-starred in the 2006 movie Flyboys. He dropped out of USC film school to work on this World War I aviation film, starring James Franco. He even went as far as putting up about 30% of its $60 million budget himself. While the film earned only about $18 million at the box office, the experience launched his career and network in the industry.

In 2010, he founded Skydance Media to produce Hollywood films and TV shows. Initially, it was known as Skydance Productions. With funding from his family and credit lines arranged with banks, Skydance quickly became a major player.

The company’s mission has been to co-finance and produce high-profile mainstream projects. Oftentimes, it works on big-budget blockbusters, while also expanding into diverse areas. Early on, Skydance co-financed Mission: Impossible, Ghost Protocol (2011), and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), establishing its track record.

Major Productions

He has produced, often as executive producer,  many blockbuster films. Notable credits include Terminator Genisys (2015), Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015), Life (2017), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Top Gun: Maverick in particular earned critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It was a first Oscar nomination for David as a producer.

Other big titles under his belt include Jack Reacher, World War Z, the Jack Ryan series, and Michael Bay’s 6 Underground. Also, there’s The Old Guard, and the Mission: Impossible sequels through 2023. He has also ventured into television, serving as executive producer on series like Manhattan, Grace and Frankie, Jack Ryan, and Altered Carbon.

Skydance-Paramount Deal (2024-2025)

In 2024-25, he pursued a major merger of Skydance with Paramount Global, formerly ViacomCBS. Reports in early 2024 stated Skydance would buy Paramount’s parent, National Amusements, and merge the companies. This would give him an ownership stake in the combined studio. The deal was approved by regulators in July 2025 and completed in August 2025, forming Paramount Skydance Corporation. He now serves as Chairman and CEO of this merged entity.

Business Style and Reputation

Initially, the media nicknamed David a trust fund kid because of the family wealth used to back his projects. Not to mention, some even called him dumb money, rich people losing money on films. However, he quickly shed that image by assembling smart film executives and making hit choices.

Larry Ellison’s Children: David’s Personal Life and Interests

Marriage and Family

In 2011, he married Sandra Lynn Modic, an actress and singer, in Palm Springs, California. The couple has two children. However, their names are generally kept private. David and Sandra maintain a relatively private family life, but they have been seen at public events occasionally.

Hobbies and Personal Interests

David is a licensed pilot with advanced certifications. He flies helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and performs aerobatic stunts. As a teenager, he trained in the same aerobatic program that his father participated in. And in 2003, at age 20, he even performed with an airshow team at Oshkosh. He is also known to enjoy fast cars and sailing like his father. The LA Times described him early on as a “Ferrari-driving son” of Larry Ellison.

Public Appearances and Reputation

David often mingles with tech and Hollywood elites, though he is less in the limelight than a typical movie star. He attends industry events and charity galas but avoids tabloid headlines. Media profiles note that he is generally modest despite his wealth.

On film sets, he never flaunts his family name. He’s an active member of the Producers Guild of America and the Television Academy. What’s more, his personal style is laid-back. According to friends,  he’s friendly and grounded. Overall, he balances a high-powered career with a stable family life and adventurous hobbies.

Mentorship Legacy

Although he dropped out of USC, David is often seen as a role model for young filmmakers aspiring to produce big movies. He has spoken about how his schooling and early work at Oracle helped him understand business, but ultimately, his passion was filmmaking. He credits his success to hard work on and off set, a supportive network, including his father’s tech and entertainment contacts, and a willingness to learn on the job.

Megan Ellison: Early Life and Education

Megan Ellison, full name Margaret Elizabeth Ellison, was born on January 31, 1986, in Santa Clara County, California. Like her brother, she spent her early years living on a horse farm in Woodside with her mother and grew up surrounded by film. The children watched classic and blockbuster movies on a home VCR every weekend.

Education

She attended Sacred Heart Preparatory, a Catholic secondary school in Atherton, California, and graduated in 2004. She then enrolled in film school at USC, but after about two semesters, she left to travel the world and pursue film work. During that gap year, she spent time abroad, including trekking in Nepal. These were experiences that would later influence her career. Her company’s name, for instance, was after the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal.

Family Influence

Her mother also fostered her interest in movies. She grew up admiring directors and screenwriters as heroes. She has mentioned that watching films like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park with her brother inspired her cinematic tastes. Her father’s second and fourth marriages gave her a unique perspective on family, but she is best known for channeling the family’s wealth into supporting ambitious film projects.

Megan Ellison: Film Career and Business Ventures

Annapurna Pictures 

At age 24, she founded Annapurna Pictures, an independent production company, to finance original, auteur-driven films. The name Annapurna comes from the Himalayan mountain range she hiked on the Annapurna Circuit in 2006.

Her vision was to invest in original, daring movies that major studios avoided, especially dramas, period pieces, and highbrow auteur films. The company is privately financed, primarily by her family’s wealth. From the start, her father helped to back the company.

Early Projects and Talent

Megan quickly attracted top talent. She hired veteran film industry executives but also insisted on giving directors creative freedom. Annapurna’s early slate 2012-2013 was remarkably bold. It financed Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), and David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013), among others. These films were critically acclaimed and commercially successful. All three earned multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

Accolades and Recognition

Her impact on the industry has been widely recognized. In 2014, Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She also won a Tony Award as a producer for the Broadway musical A Strange Loop (Best Musical). Industry lists have highlighted her role. The Advocate included her in its 40 Under 40 list (2014). And in 2018, she received Cannes’ Women in Motion Award for empowering women in film. As one Hollywood executive put it, her deep pockets and highbrow tastes were helping reinvigorate the independent film business.

Studio Expansions

Under her leadership, Annapurna branched out beyond feature films. The company later launched Annapurna Interactive for video games and Annapurna Animation. Notably, in 2021, she rescued the animated film Nimona, a cancelled Blue Sky project, by acquiring it for Annapurna Animation. She formed Annapurna’s animation division and contracted DNEG Animation to complete Nimona, which was eventually released on Netflix in 2023.

Notable Business Relationships

Early in her career, she benefited from connections that her father’s circle provided. Her Annapurna films often involved top agents, lawyers, and fellow Hollywood figures who advised her, e.g., Barry Diller and Tom Rothman. She famously made a deal with her brother David’s Skydance to co-produce Terminator Genisys (2015). This illustrates how the Ellison siblings collaborated professionally.

Larry Ellison’s Children: Megan’s Personal Life and Interests

Personal profile

Unlike many Hollywood figures, she maintains a very private personal life. She is openly lesbian, but does not publicize her relationships. Megan rarely gives interviews or appears in tabloids, preferring to let her work speak for itself. Press accounts describe her as soft-spoken and introspective. One colleague said, “She’s soft-spoken, but she’s not afraid to tell you how it is.”

Hobbies and hobbies

Megan’s personal interests include motorcycles and horseback riding. She has been described as a motorcycle-riding iconoclast and even upgraded from riding Harleys to driving a sleek Aston Martin. In her youth, she was also a competitive equestrian. She trained at her family’s Woodside stables and rode in youth competitions. These active pursuits contrast with her private, thoughtful persona.

Residences

She often splits time between Los Angeles and her father’s private island of Lānaʻi in Hawaii, which Larry Ellison owns almost entirely. After some Annapurna setbacks in 2019, she secluded herself for a period on Lānaʻi to regroup. Her main base of operations remains the Annapurna headquarters on Sunset Boulevard, a multi-million dollar compound that houses offices and screening rooms.

Personal Style

While her brother is known as a pilot and auto enthusiast, she is known for intellectual, eclectic hobbies. She has a private art collection and sometimes appears at film festivals or Cannes with directors. But compared to most movie moguls, she keeps a low profile and dresses casually, often seen in jeans, t-shirts, and, earlier on, leather jackets.

Larry Ellison’s Children: Oracle Connection and Other Ventures

Though David and Megan made their careers in film, they remain closely tied to Oracle and their father’s tech legacy:

Ownership Stakes

As noted, Larry Ellison’s children are extremely wealthy through trusts in Oracle and later NetSuite shareholders. This connection has occasionally translated into nominal corporate roles. For example, David sat on Oracle’s board for a brief period in the 2000s, reportedly, though he stepped down to focus on films. However, they have not worked in day-to-day operations at Oracle.

Funding for Projects

The Oracle fortune essentially funded ventures by Larry Ellison’s children. Skydance’s early financing relied on David’s equity and credit lines in tech-backed firms. Annapurna, on the other hand, was initially capitalized by Larry’s money. Thus, their involvement with Oracle is mainly as heirs of Oracle’s founder. Their personal net worth, as well, remains tied largely to Oracle stock.

Public and Media Profile

Despite their wealth and influence, Larry Ellison’s children often stay out of the celebrity spotlight.

Behind-the-scenes Influence

The media describe them as big behind-the-scenes names in Hollywood who rarely court publicity. Both mix in elite circles with actors, politicians, and tech CEOs, but are known more for attending festivals, summits, and premieres than for tabloid coverage. An SCMP profile noted it was surprising how they’ve remained largely under the radar, even though they mingle with studio executives and stars.

Public Appearances

When David and Megan appear publicly, it is usually at professional events. David has recently appeared in news photos at meetings about the Skydance-Paramount deal and major studio gatherings. Megan is more rarefied. She might turn up at film festivals or award shows quietly. They were both photographed together at a professional summit in early 2025, illustrating how even personal and professional networks sometimes merge.

Larry Ellison’s Children: Personal Lives vs. Public Personas

In interviews, their co-workers say they are normal, down-to-earth people. Megan often wears casual clothes, e.g., Led Zeppelin T-shirts in meetings, despite her fortune. David is known for his quick wit and friendly demeanor. Both enjoy sharing wins with their crews. David, for instance, is often credited as producing movies but will introduce film crew members on social media, while Megan personally supported musicians and artists on her film sets.

Final Remarks

In summary, Larry Ellison’s children, David and Megan Ellison, have carved out independent careers from their fathers. They grew up in Silicon Valley wealth but were raised to appreciate movies, which became their shared passion. David runs Skydance Media, now merged with Paramount. He is a licensed pilot, married with two children, and known for a casual, friendly style.

Megan, on the other hand, founded Annapurna Pictures, 2011 at age 24 and became a prominent financier of critically acclaimed films. She has earned multiple Oscar noms and even a Tony Award, while remaining notoriously private about her personal life.