After dropping out of two universities in the 1960s, Ellison founded a company in 1977 that would later become Oracle. Under his leadership, Oracle has grown into a mammoth firm that employs over 135,000 people and boasted annual revenues of $40 billion in 2021. In addition to driving the massive growth of his own company since its founding, Ellison has defined how the global business sector uses big data by developing and launching products used by all of the 100 largest public companies in the world and by 430,000 customers in 175 countries.