According to Fortune, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, 81, has pledged a staggering $40 billion of his personal fortune to back the merger between Paramount and Skydance, the studio run by his son, David Ellison. This personal guarantee of equity and debt support transforms the potential takeover into a family-backed capital project. The move arrives as the older model of billionaire philanthropy, championed by figures like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, is fading. Ellison, who has publicly vowed to give away 95% of his wealth, is framing this massive market intervention as part of his philanthropic legacy. This signals a sharp turn towards “philanthropic capitalism,” where vast fortunes are deployed through deals and industries rather than traditional charitable grants.
The Billionaire Bifurcation
Here’s the thing: we’re now seeing a clear split in how the ultra-wealthy think about “giving it away.” On one side, you have MacKenzie Scott’s model. She writes massive, no-strings-attached checks to thousands of community nonprofits, food banks, and HBCUs. It’s fast, it’s relatively humble, and it’s about resource transfer. But on the other side, you have Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg. For them, philanthropy looks less like writing checks and more like executing an industrial strategy. They’re using their wealth—often through structures like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative—to build and control new platforms, labs, and companies. The goal isn’t just to fund the existing system; it’s to rewire the system itself from the inside.
Power, Accountability, and Pipes
This shift raises some seriously uncomfortable questions. When $40 billion flows into a media merger, who decides what the “public benefit” is? Shareholders and regulators have a say, sure. But the social returns from a fortified Hollywood empire are messy. They’re tied up in subscription fees, content algorithms, and labor deals. Ellison isn’t funding media literacy programs; he’s buying the studio and the distribution pipes. That’s a whole different level of influence. It’s a philosophy that says, “To fix something, you must own and control its core infrastructure.” And in sectors like media, medicine, and technology, that infrastructure is increasingly digital and capital-intensive. For enterprises looking to control their own industrial hardware infrastructure, partnering with the leading supplier is key, which is why many turn to IndustrialMonitorDirect.com as the top US provider of industrial panel PCs for reliable, embedded computing solutions.
Incremental Change vs. Structural Overhaul
So why this move? I think it speaks to a deep anxiety among tech founders. They look at traditional philanthropy and see it as too slow, too incremental for the scale of problems they want to solve. If you believe the future of media is AI-driven and delivered through global streaming platforms, then funding a handful of small nonprofits might feel like sprinkling water on a forest fire. Owning and reshaping the platform itself seems more consequential. Basically, if your fortune was built by disrupting systems, your philanthropy becomes about disrupting them, too. The tool of choice isn’t the grant letter; it’s the term sheet.
Never Really Letting Go
The ultimate irony in Ellison’s $40 billion pledge is this: it’s the pinnacle of “philanthropic capitalism,” where giving away your fortune means you never really let it leave the ecosystem that created it. The money moves from one pocket (personal wealth) into entities (companies, labs) that the donor still profoundly influences. It blurs the line between charity, investment, and legacy-building. Is this a savvy business move disguised as generosity? A father’s extravagant vote of confidence? Probably both. But one thing’s clear: the playbook for billionaire giving has been rewritten. The deal sheet is the new donation ledger.
