Larry Ellison Has Moved To Hawaii As Oracle Heads To Texas

Unlike HPE CEO Antonio Neri, who plans to move to the Houston area when his company moves its headquarters from California to Texas, Ellison has moved in the opposite direction to his private island of Lanai.

Larry Ellison has packed his bags to move west to Hawaii even as the company he leads, Oracle, is moving eastwards to Texas.

Ellison, the chairman, chief technology officer, and co-founder of software giant Oracle and one of the world’s richest men, on Monday told his employees via a company-wide email that he had moved to Hawaii to the island of Lanai, which he owns.

Ellison unveiled his move just days after unveiling the move of Oracle’s corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas, where the company has had a presence for years.

[Related: Larry Ellison CEO Timeline: Making The IT Industry Fun For 40 Years]

Despite Oracle’s move to Texas and Ellison’s move to Hawaii, the company plans to maintain a significant presence in the San Francisco Bay area including Redwood City, where the company’s headquarters was previously located.

Online news site Vox, which Monday first reported the news that Ellison had moved to Hawaii, quoted from Ellison’s email which said in part, “I’ve received a number of inquiries about whether or not I will be moving to Texas. The answer is no. 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 signed his email with ”Mahalo,” Vox reported. “Mahalo” is a native Hawaiian expression of gratitude.

Lanai is the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian islands, and is currently 98-percent owned by Ellison. Prior to Ellison purchasing it in 2012 from the Dole Food Company, Lanai was best known as a top pineapple producing area.

Oracle unveiled plans to move its headquarters to Texas less than two weeks after the company’s Bay Area peer and rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise unveiled plans to move its headquarters to Houston to create what HPE CEO Antonio Neri called two very strong hubs for the company.

However, unlike Ellison, who is moving from California in the opposite direction of his company, Neri plans to move to the Houston area with HPE’s headquarters.

Oracle did not respond to a CRN request for further information.