Oracular —

Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle CEO

World's fifth-wealthiest person will now be Oracle's "Executive Chairman" and CTO.

A man in a suit speaks into a microphone.
Oracle founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison.

Larry Ellison, CEO of multinational software company Oracle, is leaving his position as CEO effective immediately. According to the company's official statement, Larry Ellison will continue to work for the company as its Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer.

In his stead, Oracle executives Mark Hurd (formerly of HP) and Safra Katz will take over as co-CEOs. Oracle's statement says that Ellison will continue to be in charge of "all software and hardware engineering functions" in his new role as the company's CTO.

"Safra and Mark will now report to the Oracle Board rather than to me," said Ellison via the statement. "All the other reporting relationships will remain unchanged. The three of us have been working well together for the last several years, and we plan to continue working together for the foreseeable future."

Ellison launched Oracle in 1977 with cofounders Bob Miner and Ed Oates as Software Development Laboratories. The company was renamed Relational Software Inc. in 1979, after releasing Oracle Version 2, the first commercial SQL database. The company would not become known as Oracle until 1982. It is perhaps most well-known for its Oracle Database product, an extremely scalable (and extremely expensive) relational database management solution in use at many, if not most, of the world's biggest companies.

Re/code notes that Oracle's stock has fallen by over 3% on the news.

Channel Ars Technica