Larry Ellison’s $40 billion pledge to his son’s Paramount deal shows a shift in billionaire giving: Philanthropic capitalism is taking over

Larry Ellison, the 81-year-old Oracle co-founder and longtime mogul of tech and sport, recently sent ripples through the business and philanthropic worlds by revealing plans to devote $40 billion of his own fortune to the Paramount–Skydance merger — a deal that redefines not only Hollywood’s future but Ellison’s own legacy. Ellison’s $40 billion promise to personally back his son’s Paramount deal is not a charitable donation in the classic sense. It is something more emblematic of this billionaire era: philanthropic capitalism, where vast personal fortunes are deployed through markets rather than around them, and “giving it away” increasingly means reshaping industries instead of writing checks to traditional charities. It lands at the exact moment that the older model of billionaire philanthropy—epitomized by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates—is visibly winding down , creating a stark contrast between giving that flows through foundations and giving that rides on deal sheets. Ellison’s move is as audacious as it is intimate. His son, David Ellison, runs Skydance, the upstart studio that has been circling Paramount and now aims to fuse old‑line Hollywood assets with a tech‑forward, streaming‑native strategy. Ellison’s commitment, structured as a personal guarantee of more than $40 billion in equity and debt support for Paramount’s bid, effectively turns a hostile takeover into a family‑backed capital project. It is a father’s show of confidence, but it is also a data‑era mogul’s attempt to wire his worldview into the next generation of media infrastructure. This would be notable even if Ellison had never uttered a word about philanthropy. But the Oracle cofounder has publicly pledged to give away at least 95% of his fortune over time, joining the cohort of mega‑donors who say they do not intend to die with most of their wealth. In that context, the Paramount guarantee looks less like a side bet and more like a preview of how he intends to fulfill that promise: not primarily through anonymous grants to charities, but by moving enormous sums into entities he believes can “fix” big systems—medicine, software, and now entertainment. Growing divide in billionaire giving That philosophy distinguishes Ellison from someone like MacKenzie Scott, who has become the avatar of a more traditional, community‑centered model of billionaire giving. Scott has directed tens of billions of dollars in largely unrestricted donations to thousands of nonprofits, with a deliberate emphasis on organizations serving marginalized communities—ranging from housing and food security groups to HBCUs and grassroots racial‑justice networks. Her theory of change is straightforward: transfer resources quickly to on‑the‑ground organizations, trust local leaders to allocate them, and avoid the overhead and power concentration of a large foundation. Ellison, by contrast, has long preferred to seed institutions that look more like extensions of his professional life. His largest publicized gifts have gone into cutting‑edge medical research and institutions that blend science and technology, such as cancer and AI‑driven medicine initiatives. The Paramount commitment extends that pattern into culture. Rather than funding media literacy programs or journalism nonprofits, Ellison is putting his thumb on the scale...

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