Founded 1977 · ORCL · CIK 1341439
Oracle Leadership
Who founded Oracle in 1977, who runs the company today after the September 22, 2025 co-CEO transition, and how founder Larry Ellison's approximately 40.6% beneficial-ownership concentration produces voting concentration without a super-voting class. Sourced from Oracle's most recent DEF 14A proxy statement filed September 26, 2025, plus the Item 5.02 8-Ks for the CEO transition and the FY2025 10-K.
Sibling page: Oracle Financials. The financials page's capital-returns subsection (buybacks plus dividends) is the cap-table-driven flip side of the voting-concentration story below — every share Oracle repurchases mechanically increases Ellison's percentage ownership. Roster row: Oracle on /orgs/.
CEO transition — September 22, 2025
On September 22, 2025, consistent with Oracle's succession plan, Safra A. Catz retired from her position as CEO after eleven years — six as co-CEO with Mark Hurd (September 2014–October 2019) and five as sole CEO after Hurd's death — and was appointed Executive Vice Chair of the Board. The Board appointed Clayton M. Magouyrk, previously President of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and Michael D. Sicilia, previously President of Industries, as CEOs of Oracle to succeed Ms. Catz. Douglas Kehring, previously Executive Vice President of Operations, was appointed Executive Vice President and Principal Financial Officer (PFO) to succeed Ms. Catz as Oracle's PFO.
The new arrangement echoes the Catz / Hurd co-CEO era that ran from September 2014 until Hurd's death in October 2019. Magouyrk, age 39, joined Oracle in 2014 from Amazon Web Services and was a founding member of Oracle's cloud engineering team; under his leadership OCI grew into the AI-training and inference platform that the company's FY2026 OCI revenue breakout now surfaces explicitly. Sicilia, age 54, joined Oracle through the 2008 acquisition of Primavera Systems and most recently led Oracle's Industries unit (including Oracle Health, the rebranded Cerner business). The Compensation Committee awarded Magouyrk a $250 million stock-option grant and Sicilia a $100 million stock-option grant, each split 80% time-based / 20% performance-based, with the performance-based portion vesting over three years ending May 31, 2028 subject to revenue metrics.
Founder Larry Ellison, age 81, continues in his Executive Chair + Chief Technology Officer roles — the dual title he has held since September 2014 — and remains a substantively active participant in product strategy and customer commitments. The September 2025 transition therefore did not change Oracle's founder-still-active-at-49-years governance story, only the CEO-suite shape underneath it.
Sources: 8-K filed September 22, 2025 (Item 5.02 — CEO transition) · DEF 14A filed September 26, 2025 (Director Nominees section confirms the new CEOs as 2025 director nominees).
Founders · 1977
Oracle was founded in June 1977 as Software Development Laboratories (renamed Relational Software, Inc. in 1979, then Oracle Corporation in 1982) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. All three had worked together at Ampex Corporation in the early 1970s, where they built data-handling systems for the CIA's intelligence-database project (code-named "Oracle"); the name carried forward to the new company. Ellison's continued active role at age 81 makes Oracle the longest-tenured founder-still-active story on the Mungomash roster.
Co-founder and inaugural CEO from 1977 through September 18, 2014, when he transitioned to Executive Chair + CTO. Continues to direct Oracle's technology strategy, appears substantively on every quarterly earnings call alongside the CEOs, and personally negotiates large OCI capacity commitments. Holds approximately 40.6% of Oracle's outstanding common stock as of the September 19, 2025 record date — the cap-table fact behind Oracle's founder-voting-concentration story (see the voting structure section). Studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Chicago without completing a degree; worked at Ampex Corporation (where the project that became Oracle was named after the CIA's "Oracle" intelligence database) and Amdahl Corporation before co-founding Software Development Laboratories in 1977.
Designed and wrote much of the original Oracle Database code through V3 (1983) and V4 (1984). Served as the head of Oracle's product development through 1992, when illness forced him into a part-time role as Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology. Died of lung cancer in November 1994 at age 52. Holds a recognized place in database history as the engineer who shipped the first commercial relational database product.
Worked alongside Ellison and Miner on the Ampex CIA "Oracle" database project before joining Software Development Laboratories at founding. Held various engineering roles at Oracle until retiring in 1996. Speaks publicly about Oracle's early days but holds no current operating role.
Current executive officers
The September 2025 DEF 14A lists the current Section 16 reporting officers as of the record date plus the post-record-date co-CEO transition. The September 22, 2025 Item 5.02 8-K filed four days before the proxy mailing replaced Catz with Magouyrk + Sicilia in the CEO seats; the proxy itself reflects the post-transition roster. Ages are as of the September 19, 2025 record date. Click any row for the bio detail.
Lawrence J. Ellison
81
Executive Chair of the Board, Chief Technology Officer, and Founder
1977 (founding)
Founder. Served as Chief Executive Officer from 1977 through September 18, 2014; on that date transitioned to Executive Chair of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, the dual title he continues to hold. Direct day-to-day involvement in product engineering and customer commitments — OCI capacity commitments with named AI customers have been publicly attributed to Ellison personally on earnings calls. See the Founders section above for biographical detail; see the voting structure section below for the ~40.6% beneficial-ownership concentration.
Clayton M. Magouyrk
39
Chief Executive Officer (from September 22, 2025)
2014
Appointed CEO effective September 22, 2025 per the Item 5.02 8-K filed September 22, 2025. Joined Oracle in 2014 as a founding member of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure engineering team after several years at Amazon Web Services. Served as President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) from July 2024 to September 2025, overseeing the design, implementation, and business growth of Gen2 OCI — the substrate that landed the FY2026 AI-infrastructure customer-commitment cluster now visible in the company's RPO trajectory. The Compensation Committee awarded a $250 million stock-option grant in connection with the promotion: 80% time-based vesting over four years, 20% performance-based vesting over three years ending May 31, 2028 subject to revenue metrics, per Oracle's Amended and Restated 2020 Equity Incentive Plan.
Michael D. Sicilia
54
Chief Executive Officer (from September 22, 2025)
2008 (via Primavera)
Appointed co-CEO effective September 22, 2025 per the same Item 5.02 8-K. Joined Oracle in 2008 through the acquisition of Primavera Systems (project portfolio management software). Most recently served as President, Industries from June 2025 to September 2025, overseeing Oracle's vertical-applications portfolio including Oracle Health (the rebranded Cerner business), Oracle Financial Services Industries, and Oracle Communications. Before Industries, led Oracle's effort to use intent-based application generation to replace traditional coding for building Oracle applications. The Compensation Committee awarded a $100 million stock-option grant on the same 80% time-based / 20% performance-based structure as Magouyrk's grant.
Safra A. Catz
63
Executive Vice Chair of the Board (from September 22, 2025)
1999
Joined Oracle in 1999. Served as co-CEO with Mark Hurd from September 2014 until Hurd's death in October 2019, then as sole CEO from October 2019 to September 22, 2025. Stepped into the Executive Vice Chair role on the same date; the proxy describes her continuing role as helping oversee Oracle's strategic direction. Earlier served as President from January 2004 to September 2014 and as CFO from November 2005 to September 2008 and again from April 2011 to September 2014. Member of the Board since 2001. Prior to Oracle, was a managing director and member of the executive committee at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (1994–1999).
Jeffrey O. Henley
80
Executive Vice Chair of the Board
1991
Has served as Executive Vice Chair of the Board since September 2014. Previously served as Chairman of the Board from January 2004 to September 2014 and as Chief Financial Officer from March 1991 to July 2004. Member of the Board since 1995.
Douglas Kehring
—
Executive Vice President, Principal Financial Officer (from September 22, 2025)
2005
Appointed Executive Vice President and Principal Financial Officer effective September 22, 2025, succeeding Catz as Oracle's PFO. Previously served as Executive Vice President, Operations. Joined Oracle in 2005 and has held various senior operating roles since.
Edward Screven
—
Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Architect
1986
Long-tenured Oracle executive responsible for cross-product technical architecture. Named in the September 2025 DEF 14A beneficial-ownership table as one of the company's Section 16 reporting officers.
The September 2025 proxy lists eighteen current executive officers and directors as a group, holding approximately 40.9% of Oracle's outstanding common stock combined. Additional Section 16 reporting officers not separately tabulated above (Stuart Levey as General Counsel; Maria Smith as Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer; and the segment-presidential roster Oracle Health (Mike Sicilia formerly) / Oracle Industries / Hardware) carry the same Section 16 reporting requirements; their bios are in the proxy and on oracle.com/corporate/leadership/.
The founder-Executive-Chair-CTO governance arrangement
Larry Ellison has been at Oracle for forty-nine years and has held an executive title every day of those forty-nine years. The September 2014 transition out of the CEO seat was not a step toward retirement; it was a redistribution. Ellison took the title of Executive Chair of the Board and Chief Technology Officer simultaneously — the dual title is load-bearing on Oracle's governance — and retained the founder authority that the CEO role had previously housed. Catz and Hurd as co-CEOs picked up day-to-day operational responsibility; Ellison retained product strategy, customer commitments, and the cap-table position that backstops both.
In practice this means that the Chief Operating Decision Makers per Oracle's segment-reporting footnote (Note 13 of the FY2025 10-K, repeated in the FY2026 Q3 10-Q) are the Chief Executive Officers and the Chief Technology Officer — not the CEOs alone. The CODM identification is GAAP-required and uniquely surfaces the founder-CTO's role: the segment-revenue allocation, the resource-allocation decisions, and the performance assessment that drive the financial statements are made by Ellison-as-CTO together with the CEO(s). The arrangement survived the September 2025 transition unchanged — the FY2026 Q3 10-Q lists Magouyrk and Sicilia as the new co-CEOs in the CODM identification, with Ellison continuing as CTO.
On earnings calls, Ellison speaks substantively about OCI capacity, customer commitments, and AI-training infrastructure positioning. The publicly-reported multi-year OCI capacity commitments — OpenAI being the load-bearing example — are commitments that Ellison has personally explained to investors. This is the governance dimension that the FY2026 RPO growth from $137.8B (FY2025) to $552.6B (Q3 FY2026, a 4x jump in nine months) sits on: the cap-table holds the founder's voting concentration, the CTO title holds his operating authority, and the Executive Chair title holds his board control. Few public companies in US markets concentrate all three in one person at this scale and age.
The arrangement is structurally analogous to the founder-personal-control governance documented for other companies — xAI's founder-control concentration, Anthropic's LTBT trust governance, OpenAI's PBC-recap governance — but is achieved by different mechanics. xAI concentrates control through founder share ownership in a private structure. Oracle concentrates control through public-company common-stock ownership concentration without dual-class voting. The economic and governance outcome is similar; the legal and disclosure structure is not.
Board of directors — 2025 nominees
The 2025 Annual Meeting was held November 18, 2025; thirteen director nominees stood for election, with each named below. Ages are as of the September 19, 2025 record date. Bruce R. Chizen serves as Lead Independent Director. The Board's three permanent committees (Finance and Audit, Compensation, and Governance) are staffed exclusively by independent directors per NYSE listing rules. Click any row for the bio detail.
Lawrence J. Ellison
—
81
Executive Chair + CTO + Founder
1977
See the Founders section for biographical detail. As the company's founder and largest individual shareholder (~40.6% beneficial ownership), Ellison's board seat is not classified as independent under NYSE listing rules.
Clayton M. Magouyrk
—
39
Co-CEO; new 2025 director
2025
Elected to the Board in connection with the September 22, 2025 CEO transition. See the executive officer bio for background.
Michael D. Sicilia
—
54
Co-CEO; new 2025 director
2025
Elected to the Board in connection with the September 22, 2025 CEO transition. See the executive officer bio for background.
Safra A. Catz
—
63
Executive Vice Chair (former CEO 2014–2025)
2001
See the executive officer bio.
Jeffrey O. Henley
—
80
Executive Vice Chair (former Chairman 2004–2014)
1995
See the executive officer bio.
Bruce R. Chizen
I
70
Lead Independent Director; former Adobe CEO
2008
Lead Independent Director. Currently serves as Senior Adviser to Permira Advisers LLP, the European private-equity firm, and as an independent consultant. Served as Chief Executive Officer of Adobe Systems from December 2000 to December 2007 and held various other senior positions at Adobe and earlier at Claris and Mattel. Holds a B.A. from Brooklyn College.
George H. Conrades
I
86
Former CEO and current Executive Advisor to Akamai Technologies
2008
Independent Director. Currently serves as Executive Advisor to Akamai Technologies (the content-delivery-network provider), having previously served as Chairman from May 1999 to May 2018 and CEO from April 1999 to April 2005. Earlier was a Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, EVP at GTE Internetworking, CEO of BBN Corporation, and held leadership roles at IBM.
Michael J. Boskin
I
80
Stanford economist; former Chair, Council of Economic Advisers
1994
Independent Director. Tully M. Friedman Professor of Economics and Rose and Milton Friedman Hoover Institution Senior Fellow at Stanford University. Served as Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from February 1989 to January 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. Long-tenured Oracle director (since 1994).
Jeffrey S. Berg
I
78
Entertainment-industry agent and executive
1997
Independent Director. Has been an agent, media executive, and adviser in the entertainment industry for over 45 years. Served as Chairman of International Creative Management (ICM).
Naomi O. Seligman
I
87
Senior partner, Ostriker von Simson, technology research
2005
Independent Director. Has served as a senior partner at Ostriker von Simson, Inc., a technology research firm that chairs the CIO Strategy Exchange, since founding it in 1999. Previously a co-founder of the Research Board, an information-technology think tank for CIOs.
Charles W. Moorman
I
73
Former CEO, Norfolk Southern; former Senior Advisor, Amtrak
2018
Independent Director. Most recently served as Senior Advisor to Amtrak from 2018 to 2025. Previously served as Acting President and CEO of Amtrak (2016–2017) and Chairman, President, and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation.
Rona A. Fairhead
I
64
Former UK Minister of State for Trade; former Chair, BBC Trust
2019
Independent Director. Served as Minister of State for Trade and Export Promotion at the UK Department for International Trade. Previously Chair of the BBC Trust (2014–2017) and Chair and CEO of the Financial Times Group at Pearson plc (2006–2013).
Awo Ablo
I
53
President, Co-Impact; former EVP, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
2022
Independent Director. Has served as President at Co-Impact since March 2025. Previously Executive Vice President, Strategy and Partnerships at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (November 2022 to March 2025) and held earlier roles at the BBC World Service Trust and the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.
"I" denotes independent under NYSE rules. Ellison, Catz, Henley, Magouyrk, and Sicilia are not classified as independent due to their executive roles. The 2024 proxy named Renee James, William G. Parrett, Leon E. Panetta, and Stuart Levey on prior boards; the 2025 nominee slate (above) reflects board composition decisions made for the November 18, 2025 Annual Meeting.
Voting structure — single-class common stock with founder voting concentration
Oracle has a single class of common stock outstanding with one vote per share on all matters submitted to stockholders. This is structurally distinct from the dual-class super-voting recipes used by Palantir (Class F — the founder voting trust), Alphabet (Class B 10:1), Meta (Class B 10:1), Snap, Lyft, and many other founder-controlled public companies. Oracle achieves comparable founder control through ownership concentration alone rather than through voting-multiplier mechanics.
As of the September 19, 2025 record date for the 2025 Annual Meeting, the September 2025 DEF 14A's beneficial-ownership table reports:
- Lawrence J. Ellison — 1,158,232,353 shares (40.6%) of Oracle common stock outstanding. The proxy notes that 346,000,000 of these shares are pledged as collateral securing personal indebtedness including lines of credit; the Governance Committee reviews the pledging arrangements quarterly and reports its findings to the Finance and Audit Committee and the Board.
- All current executive officers and directors as a group (18 persons) — 1,166,800,963 shares (40.9%) — concentrated almost entirely in Ellison.
- The Vanguard Group — 149,688,484 shares (5.3%) — the only other >5% beneficial owner disclosed.
The practical effect: on any contested matter (a contested director vote, an activist-driven proposal, a major transaction requiring stockholder approval), Ellison alone holds enough votes to materially influence the outcome. Combined with the other executive officers and directors, the inside group consistently votes a plurality. Oracle's share buyback program mechanically increases Ellison's percentage ownership over time — every share repurchased reduces the denominator without changing Ellison's numerator. The FY2025 buyback was a modest $600M (decelerated from multi-billion-per-quarter pace earlier in the 2010s), but cumulative buybacks since the early 2010s have meaningfully concentrated his stake.
The September 2025 CEO transition (Catz to Magouyrk + Sicilia) did not change the voting structure. Catz did not hold a meaningful voting position even as sole CEO (her ~1.1M shares are less than 0.04% of the outstanding common stock); Magouyrk and Sicilia hold smaller positions still. The founder voting concentration is concentrated in Ellison personally and survives any CEO-suite change.
CEO transition timeline
Three distinct CEO eras across Oracle's 49-year history, plus the current co-CEO arrangement. Color-coded for at-a-glance scanning. Newest first.
Notable transitions and departures
Senior officer and director transitions across Oracle's history. The forty-nine-year time horizon means the list necessarily reaches back further than the public-company-only window most peer pages use; the entries below are the structurally significant ones rather than an exhaustive enumeration. Newest first.
Safra A. Catz
Sept 22, 2025
Retired as CEO after 11 years; transitioned to Executive Vice Chair of the Board.
Disclosed in the Item 5.02 8-K filed September 22, 2025. Catz did not retire from Oracle — she continues on the Board and as Executive Vice Chair, retaining a Section 16 reporting role and continuing to help oversee strategic direction. Reading her transition together with the appointment of Magouyrk and Sicilia as co-CEOs is the right frame for the change: the operational-leadership baton passed; the founder + executive-leadership group is unchanged.
Mark Hurd
Oct 18, 2019
Died of cancer at age 62 while on medical leave from the co-CEO role.
Hurd took medical leave on September 11, 2019, citing unspecified health-related reasons; the medical-leave 8-K did not disclose the underlying cancer diagnosis. Died October 18, 2019. Catz transitioned to sole CEO on the same date. Before Oracle, Hurd was CEO of HP (2005–August 2010), departing HP after an internal investigation into expense reporting connected to a sexual-harassment complaint — allegations that Hurd disputed. He joined Oracle as President in September 2010 and was promoted to co-CEO in September 2014. Oracle's October 2019 8-K announcing his death noted the loss to the company directly.
Lawrence J. Ellison
Sept 18, 2014
Transitioned from CEO to Executive Chair + CTO after 37 years as founder-CEO.
Mark Hurd and Safra Catz appointed co-CEOs simultaneously. Ellison continues at Oracle in the Executive Chair + CTO dual role to the present day. The transition was a redistribution of responsibilities rather than a step-down — see the founder-Chair-CTO governance section.
Charles Phillips
Sept 2010
Departed as Co-President; replaced by Mark Hurd shortly after Hurd's HP departure.
Phillips served as Oracle Co-President from 2003 to 2010 alongside Safra Catz. His departure cleared the Co-President seat that Mark Hurd filled in September 2010, immediately after Hurd's HP departure. Subsequently founded Infor (enterprise software) and served as its CEO until 2019.
Ray Lane
June 30, 2000
Resigned as President and COO amid the Ellison-relationship friction that publicly defined the period.
Lane joined Oracle in 1992 and served as President from 1996 to 2000, widely credited with building the sales organization that drove the late-1990s growth. His departure was contemporaneously reported as a consequence of friction with Ellison; Lane subsequently became a partner at Kleiner Perkins and later non-executive Chairman of HP (2011–2013).
Bob Miner
Nov 11, 1994
Co-founder; died of lung cancer at age 52 after stepping into a part-time SVP role in 1992 due to illness.
Designed and wrote much of the original Oracle Database code through V3 and V4. The Bob Miner Memorial Foundation, established after his death, supports lung-cancer research and education.
Federal customers and political relationships
Oracle is one of the largest federal-government IT contractors in the US, with a long history of contracts at the Department of Defense (across all services), the Department of Veterans Affairs (especially post-Cerner-close, for the VA's EHR modernization), the Defense Health Agency (MHS GENESIS), the Indian Health Service, and the intelligence community. See Federal Tech Spending for the cross-vendor, USAspending.gov-sourced view of Oracle's federal prime-contract obligations. The Healthcare integration brought a substantial federal EHR business under the Oracle Health brand.
Founder Larry Ellison has publicly disclosed political donations and visible relationships with US political figures of multiple administrations. To the extent these relationships have intersected with Oracle business decisions — the 2020-era proposed Oracle / Walmart / ByteDance TikTok hosting deal is the load-bearing example, the structure of which shifted multiple times before any final state was reached — this page surfaces what Oracle has publicly disclosed in its own SEC filings. The page does not editorialize about Ellison's political alignment or relationships outside Oracle business decisions; the prose discipline mirrors the OpenAI / xAI leadership pages' treatment of founder political activities.
The September 2024 onward AI-infrastructure customer-commitment cluster (visible in the company's RPO trajectory) has involved publicly-reported relationships between Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and other AI-customer principals. The OpenAI multi-year capacity commitment is the publicly-reported anchor; Stargate-adjacent deals (the OpenAI / SoftBank / Oracle AI-infrastructure joint announcement of January 2025) sit alongside. These deals are the load-bearing financial story driving Oracle's FY2026 numbers; the founder relationships behind them are public-record context.
Read these primary sources
SEC filings are public domain. The links below are the authoritative places to read the underlying disclosures directly — what appears in news coverage is downstream of these primary sources.
DEF 14A proxy statement — current officers, directors, voting structure
Filed September 26, 2025 for the November 18, 2025 annual meeting. Authoritative for the executive-officer roster, the thirteen-director nominee slate, director ages and tenure, the beneficial-ownership table (including Ellison's 40.6% concentration), and voting-structure mechanics.
# Most recent DEF 14A
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312525220801/d72066ddef14a.htm
# All Oracle DEF 14A filings (annual)
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001341439&type=DEF+14AItem 5.02 8-K — September 22, 2025 CEO transition
Section 16 disclosure of the simultaneous Catz retirement / Magouyrk & Sicilia co-CEO appointments / Kehring PFO appointment, plus the compensation arrangements (Magouyrk $250M, Sicilia $100M stock-option grants).
# Sept 22, 2025 — Catz to Executive Vice Chair, Magouyrk & Sicilia named co-CEOs, Kehring named PFO
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312525210089/d921500d8k.htm
# All Oracle 8-K filings (recent material events)
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001341439&type=8-K10-K — FY2025 annual report
Filed June 18, 2025 for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2025. Item 1A Risk Factors, Item 10 Directors and Executive Officers, and Note 13 Segment Information are the cross-checks for the proxy data above.
# FY2025 10-K filed June 18, 2025
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000095017025087926/orcl-20250531.htm
# All Oracle 10-K filings
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001341439&type=10-KOracle's own leadership page
Company-side bios for the marketing-side framing of the same officer cohort.
# Oracle leadership page
https://www.oracle.com/corporate/leadership/
# Oracle Investor Relations
https://investor.oracle.com/Sources: Oracle DEF 14A proxy statement filed September 26, 2025 (record date September 19, 2025; 2025 annual meeting November 18, 2025); Item 5.02 8-K filed September 22, 2025 (CEO transition); FY2025 10-K filed June 18, 2025 (accession 0000950170-25-087926); FY2026 Q3 10-Q filed March 11, 2026 (accession 0001193125-26-101045); oracle.com/corporate/leadership/ company bios; contemporaneous reporting in NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, Reuters, and FT. SEC filings are public domain; reporter coverage is cited under fair use (linked, not republished). Last updated May 26, 2026.
Mungomash LLC · More org pages · Oracle Financials