He is the only man on this list whose diet and gym history are reported by people who had to live with both.
In a 2018 Quora post that the business press still cites as the best on-the-record portrait of him, Gina Smith — who worked with the Oracle founder for nearly a decade across three companies — described a man in the 1990s and 2000s who trained for several hours every day, ran a meticulous diet, and lived as though health were another product to ship. Others who’ve briefed on the routine add the details that made him a tabloid fixture at 80: no alcohol, no drugs, green tea, fish, vegetables, fruit, and for a long while carrot juice as the constant beverage; gym sessions reported by multiple sources as measured in hours rather than minutes.
That’s the diet. The rest is a sport. He races ocean sailboats — two America’s Cup wins (2010, 2013), then a 7-1 defeat in Bermuda in 2017 — not as an owner in a box seat but as a crew member training physically for months. He is a licensed jet pilot, a scuba diver to 100 ft, a tennis player, a surfer, and a triathlete at an age where triathletes are usually retired. When a photo of him at a tech event in 2024 — sun-bronzed, taut, in a linen shirt, aged 80 — circulated, the longevity influencer Bryan Johnson publicly called it “the most impressive anti-aging result I’ve seen in a person this age,” and the tabloids ran the 80-she’s-60 story for weeks.
He has never confirmed the biohacking that press speculation assigns him — face-lift, hyperbaric oxygen, the rapamycin-and-supplement frontier that the wealthy now visit like a spa. What’s on record is more pedestrian and much rarer: a man who has exercised for hours, daily, for decades, eats like a Mediterranean fisherman with a juicer, sails like he’s 30, and started all of it before longevity was a product category.
Oracle remains his engine; he is its executive chairman and chief technology officer at 82, still in the building, still arguing about database performance, still — per former colleagues who describe it as a personality trait more than a routine — impossible to outrun.
His name is Larry Ellison. He is 82 years old, the eighth-richest person in the world at about $172 billion, and the clearest argument this series can make that discipline is not a diet.
Sources & citations
- Gina Smith on Quora (2018), cited by Business Insider — hours-long workouts, meticulous diet — businessinsider.com/2024-09
- Fortune (Sep 2024) — carrot juice, anti-aging CEO context — fortune.com
- Social Life Magazine celebrity longevity profile — pescatarian / green tea compilation [S]
- Oracle press, America’s Cup record — wins in 2010 and 2013; 7-1 loss to Emirates Team New Zealand, Bermuda 2017 (AP); pilot/diver/surfer credentials
- Net worth: Forbes Real-Time, Nov 2026
Part 9 of the series “What Billionaires Actually Eat.”