Founder, Oracle · Owner, Sayonara · 33rd & 34th America's Cup winner
b. 1944 · Sayonara 1995 · USA-17 2010 · Oracle Team USA 2013
“Sailing is the most beautiful way to look at the world.”
Ellison interview, San Francisco Chronicle, 2010 America's Cup coverage.
USA-17
Larry Ellison is the most accomplished competitive sailor in the technology elite. His maxi-yacht Sayonara (a Bruce Farr design, launched 1995) won the 1998 Sydney–Hobart Race in the storm that killed six sailors and led to a maritime inquiry — Ellison crewed the boat himself and described the experience as the hardest 48 hours of his life. From 2000 he turned that competitive instinct into BMW Oracle Racing, building a programme that captured the 33rd America's Cup in 2010 with the radical hard-wing trimaran USA-17, then won the 34th America's Cup in 2013 in one of the greatest comebacks in sports history (8–1 down to 9–8). The Oracle programme pioneered foiling-AC72 catamarans — the technology that would change competitive sailing permanently.
Ellison owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where he has financed coral reef restoration, marine sanctuary expansion and a transition off fossil fuels. The Lanai programme is among the most ambitious private marine conservation efforts in the Pacific. Ellison is not a public ocean philanthropist in the Benioff or Schmidt model — but quietly, in his Hawaiian waters, he funds significant ocean restoration work.
USA-17 (trimaran, 2010 America's Cup winner) — 90-foot rigid-wing trimaran, the most radical AC boat ever built. Sayonara (24 m maxi, 1995) — Bruce Farr design, eight Sydney–Hobart and Fastnet finishes including the 1998 storm race. Oracle Team USA's AC72 winged catamarans — comeback victors of the 34th Cup.
Ellison is the cleanest possible bridge between Silicon Valley and wind propulsion. A new-money buyer who watches the America's Cup understands instinctively why a wind-powered is not eccentricity — it is the highest expression of the sport. Wind Voyage takes that engineering vocabulary into the explorer category.
If ocean voyaging is something you’d like to pursue, we have developed a way to do it using wind and solar power out of our respect for the oceans.
Discover the FlagshipLarry Ellison's syndicates won the America's Cup twice — the 33rd Cup in 2010 aboard the trimaran USA-17, and the 34th Cup in 2013 with Oracle Team USA, completing a famous 8-1-to-9-8 comeback. He lost the 35th Cup in 2017.
Ellison's most famous yacht is the Bruce Farr-designed maxi Sayonara (launched 1995), which won the 1998 Sydney–Hobart in the deadly storm race. He also owns the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where he funds coral reef restoration and marine sanctuary expansion.
Yes — Ellison crewed Sayonara through the 1998 Sydney–Hobart, the storm-shortened race that took the lives of six sailors. Sayonara won the race; Ellison described it as the hardest 48 hours of his life and credited the experience with shaping how he approached the America's Cup.
