Billionaire Larry Ellison reveals his big data battle plan to fight coronavirus in partnership with the Trump White House
he has created for himself, a lush 249-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, California, the playground of the powerful near Palm Springs, the world begins to fall apart. It’s Black Thursday, March 12: The U.S.
Now, under the dark sky, Ellison turns his thoughts to the larger world. Over the past eight years, he’s spent at least half a billion dollars on a Hawaiian island, Lanai, that he has turned into a laboratory for health and wellness powered by data. “Wellness is our product,” says Ellison, speaking as if the secret to good health is achieved through processing bytes of raw data—which, for Ellison, it is.
Within a week, Ellison enlisted an undisclosed number of Oracle engineers to work with Agus, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies to create a database for the country’s coronavirus cases. Doctors will register every COVID-19 case being treated with a medication on the Oracle-built website. The system will then send daily emails, to the doctor or the patient, to ask for a progress report on symptoms.
As the scale of his Rancho Mirage estate shows, Ellison competes similarly with his toys. In 2010 he spent a reported $100 million to capture sailing’s prestigious America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in international sports. Then, in 2012, the bounty of a lifetime appeared. Lanai, the island he had dreamed of buying when he was 22, was suddenly up for sale. “Can you imagine someone looking at a Monet when Claude had just finished, and put it up for sale and it was only $400?” Ellison says.
He cofounded Sensei with his close friend Agus in 2018 and is tackling three sets of complex issues on the island: the global food-supply chain, nutrition and the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources. Sensei so far has a $3,000-a-night spa called Sensei Retreat and solar-powered hydroponic greenhouses called Sensei Farms.
Before Ellison purchased Lanai in 2012, the island was owned by California billionaire David Murdock, who obtained it in 1985 when he took over Dole Food Products.
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