By Sarah Tilton
Amid the battle to acquire Warner Bros., billionaire Larry Ellison has sold his home on San Francisco's Gold Coast for $45 million, according to public records.
The off-market deal for the Pacific Heights house closed in December. The buyer's identity couldn't be learned.
Ellison, the chairman of the software company Oracle, didn't respond to a request for comment. He paid $3.9 million for the property around 1988, records show.
In recent weeks Ellison, an ally of President Trump, has been closely involved in a hostile takeover bid by Paramount, which is run by his son David Ellison, for Warner Bros. Discovery. In December, Larry offered a personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of equity financing. Warner previously agreed to a deal to sell to Netflix for $72 billion, a proposed merger that could radically reshape entertainment. Warner is expected to respond to Paramount's latest amended offer this week.
Designed by architect William Wurster around 1958, the modern, roughly 10,742-square-foot-home has five bedrooms, according to city records. Neighbors on the tony street include oil heir Gordon Getty and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple co-founder and president of Emerson Collective, paid a record $71 million for the house next to Ellison's in 2024.
After buying the Pacific Heights house in the 1980s, Ellison hired the late architect Olle Lundberg to remodel it. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out at the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay. An interior garden courtyard sits behind the stainless-steel garage doors.
The street is home to a number of young tech billionaires, said Trevor Traina, a tech entrepreneur and former U.S. ambassador to Austria, who has owned two houses there. "Kind of a thrill to know Jensen Huang and Laurene Jobs are nearby -- in case I need a cup of sugar," Traina said.
Ellison is widely known as an avid trophy home buyer. In 2022, he paid about $173 million for an estate in Manalapan, Fla., that had previously been owned by tech entrepreneur Jim Clark. He also has extensive holdings in Malibu, Calif, and on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, among other places.
In recent years, Ellison was rarely in residence at his San Francisco home, Traina said. "Larry was a perfect neighbor," he said. "His house is beautifully maintained and rarely used. Even so it's a loss for the block."
Lundberg's death in October has made his work more desirable for buyers, according to Joe Lucier of Sotheby's International Realty, who wasn't associated with the Ellison sale.
The deal topped off a banner year for San Francisco luxury real estate, with 21 sales above $15 million, Lucier said, compared with only nine each in 2023 and 2024.
The sale comes amid controversy over a proposed California ballot measure that would affect the state's wealthiest residents. The proposal, which still must gather enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, would tax residents worth more than $1 billion at the equivalent of 5% of their assets.
-- Additional reporting by Katherine Clarke
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 05, 2026 13:30 ET (18:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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