Category: Business Insider

• Larry Ellison, the 79-year-old cofounder of Oracle, is one of the most interesting men in tech.
• Whether yacht-racing, buying Hawaiian islands, or trash-talking competitors, he keeps it lively.
• Now, he's one of the world's richest people with a net worth of $146 billion.

Larry Ellison is the founder and chief technology officer at software company Oracle. He's also one of the world's richest men who owns nearly an entire Hawaiian island and never finished college.

The 79-year-old started his first software company in 1977, and decades later he's still one of the top dogs in Silicon Valley despite living in Hawaii full time. He's among the top five richest people in the world, according to Forbes.

Ellison has been a major investor in Tesla, Salesforce, and even reportedly had a seat on Apple's board of directors for a while.

Outside of the office, the billionaire boasts an impressive watch collection and indulges in hobbies like yacht racing.

Here's a look at the life and career of Ellison so far.

Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born in the Bronx on August 17, 1944, the son of a single mother named Florence Spellman.

When he was 9 months old, Larry came down with pneumonia, according to Vanity Fair. His mom sent him to Chicago to live with his aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison.

Vanity Fair reported that Louis, his adoptive father, was a Russian immigrant who took the name "Ellison" in tribute to the place in which he entered the US: Ellis Island.

Ellison is a college dropout.

Ellison went to high school in Chicago's South Side before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When his adoptive mother died during his second year at college, Ellison dropped out. He tried college again later at the University of Chicago but dropped out again after only one semester, Vanity Fair reported.

In 1966, a 22-year-old Ellison moved to Berkeley, California — near what would become Silicon Valley and already the place where the tech industry was taking off.

He made the trip from Chicago to California in a flashy turquoise Thunderbird that he thought would make an impression in his new life, according to Vanity Fair.

Ellison bounced around from job to job, including stints at companies like Wells Fargo and the mainframe manufacturer Amdahl. Along the way, he learned computer and programming skills.

In 1977, Ellison and partners Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded a new company, Software Development Laboratories.

The company started with $2,000 of funding.

Ellison and company were inspired by IBM computer scientist Edgar F. Codd's theories for a so-called relational database — a way for computer systems to store and access information, according to Britannica. Nowadays, they're taken for granted, but in the '70s, they were a revolutionary idea.

The first version of the Oracle database was version 2 — there was no version 1.

In 1979, the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc., and in 1982, it formally became Oracle Systems Corp., after its flagship product.

In 1986, Oracle had its initial public offering, reporting revenue of $55 million.

As one of the key drivers of the growing computer industry, Oracle grew fast. The company is responsible for providing the databases in which businesses track information that is crucial to their operations.

Ellison became a billionaire at age 49. Now, he has a net worth of roughly $146 billion, according to Forbes, after racking up $50 billion in gains thanks to Oracle and Tesla stock. That makes him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Still, in 1990, Oracle had to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 400 people, because of what Ellison later described as "an incredible business mistake."

Oracle reported a loss of $36 million in September 1990 after admitting that it had miscalculated its revenue earlier that year, according to The New York Times.

It didn't get the decade off to a great start. After adjusting for that error, Oracle was said to be close to bankruptcy. At the same time, rivals like Sybase were eating away at Oracle's market share.

It took a few years, but by 1992, Ellison and Oracle managed to right the course with new employees and the popular Oracle7 database.

Ellison is known for his willingness to trash-talk competitors.

For much of the '90s, he and Oracle were locked in a public-relations battle with the competitor Informix, which went so far as to place a "Dinosaur Crossing" billboard outside Oracle's Silicon Valley offices at one point, Fortune reported in 1997.

His financial success has led to some expensive hobbies.

With Ellison as Oracle's major shareholder, his millions kept rolling in. He started to indulge in some expensive hobbies — including yacht racing. That's Ellison at the helm during a 1995 race.

He also partly financed the BMW Oracle USA sailing team, which won the America's Cup in 2010, according to Bloomberg.

Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.

In 1999, Ellison's protégé, Marc Benioff, left Oracle to work on a new startup called Salesforce.com. Ellison was an early investor, putting $2 million into his friend's new venture.

When Benioff found out that Ellison had Oracle working on a direct competitor to Salesforce's product, he tried to force his mentor to quit Salesforce's board. Instead, Ellison forced Benioff to fire him — meaning Ellison kept his shares in Salesforce.

Given that Salesforce is now a $267 billion company, Ellison personally profits even when his competitors do well. It has led to a love-hate relationship between the two executives that continues to this day, with the two taking shots at each other in the press.

The dot-com boom of the late '90s benefited Oracle.

All of those new dot-com companies needed databases, and Oracle was there to sell them. Although investors lost out in the dot-com crash, Oracle came out of it stronger due to its acquisitions and the demand for software solutions.

 

With the coffers overflowing, Ellison was able to lead Oracle through a spending spree once the dot-com boom was over and prices were low.

In 2005, for example, Oracle snapped up the HR software provider PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion.

And in 2010, Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a server company that started at about the same time as Oracle, in 1982. That acquisition gave Oracle lots of key technology, including control over the popular MySQL database.

Ellison has also spent lavishly over the years, so much so that his accountant, Philip Simon, once asked him to "budget and plan," according to Bloomberg.

Ellison has expensive taste. Over the years he's built up an impressive collection of Richard Mille watches, an expert previously told BI. The timepieces start in the six-figure range and can go for over $1 million in some cases.

In 2009, the billionaire purchased the Indian Wells tennis tournament for a reported $100 million, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge.

By signing the pledge, Ellison promised to donate 95% of his fortune before he dies. And in May 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to a cancer treatment center at the University of Southern California, Forbes reported.

Starting in the 2010s, Ellison started to take more of a back seat at Oracle, handing more responsibilities to trusted lieutenants, like Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, then Oracle's co-presidents.

Ellison hired Hurd, a former CEO of HP, in 2010, Inc reported. Catz has made a reputation for herself among analysts for what they describe as brilliant business strategy.

But Ellison's spending didn't slow down. In 2012, he bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

Ellison founded a startup called Sensei in 2016 that does hydroponic farming and owns a wellness retreat on Lanai.

He also purchased Hawaiian budget airline Island Air in 2014, before selling a controlling interest in the airline two years later after it struggled financially.

In 2014, Ellison officially stepped down as Oracle CEO.

Ellison handed control over to Hurd and Catz, who became co-CEOs. Ellison now serves as the company's chairman and chief technology officer. Following Hurd's death in 2019, Catz became the sole CEO.

 

In 2016, Ellison scored a personal coup: the purchase of NetSuite.

Back in 1998, Ellison had made a $125 million investment in ex-Oracle exec Evan Goldberg's startup business-management software firm, NetSuite. It ended up working out well for Ellison when NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson negotiated the sale of the company to Oracle for $9.3 billion, netting Ellison a cool $3.5 billion in cash for his stake.

NetSuite investor T. Rowe Price tried to block the deal, citing Ellison's conflict of interest, but the sale closed in November 2016.

He's used his billions in a variety of ways: he invested in educational platform maker Leapfrog Enterprises and was an early investor in the ill-fated blood-testing company Theranos.

Ellison has held shares in some of the most recognizable companies, one of which was the infamous blood-testing company Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes. It had a promising future until its flaws were exposed and Holmes received a prison sentence.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO back in 1997, he asked Ellison to sit on the board. Ellison served for a while, but felt that he couldn't devote the time and left in 2002, according to Forbes. Compensation for his role was an option to buy about 70,000 shares, which would've amounted to about $1 million at the time of his departure.

 

Ellison owns homes on the East and West coasts as part of a multi-billion-dollar real estate portfolio.

Ellison reportedly owns the Astor Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and a home in Malibu. Ellison also has houses in Palm Beach, Florida and more in a multibillion-dollar real estate portfolio.

Both of his two children work in the film industry.

His daughter, Megan, is an Oscar-nominated film producer and the founder of Annapurna Pictures. The company has produced films like "Zero Dark Thirty" and "American Hustle."

Ellison's son, David, is also in the film business. His company, Skydance Media, has produced movies like "Terminator: Dark Fate" and films in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. Whispers of David becoming the new owner of Paramount swirled in April due to his father's net worth.

Ellison has a reputation as an international, jet-setting playboy.

Ellison has been married and divorced four times. He has most recently dated Nikita Kahn, a model and actress.

Ellison was one of the few tech leaders who had a friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump.

Ellison said publicly that he supported Trump and wants him to do well, and hosted a Trump fundraiser at his Rancho Mirage home in February, though he did not attend. The fundraiser caused an outcry among Oracle employees, who started a petition asking senior Oracle leadership to stand up to Ellison.

Catz, the CEO of Oracle, also had close ties to the Trump administration, having served on Trump's transition team. 

Ellison and Trump remained close during Trump's time in office and reportedly spoke on the phone about possible coronavirus treatments. Trump also supported Oracle's bid to buy TikTok, calling Oracle a "great company."  

In December 2018, Ellison joined the board of directors at Tesla, where he's been a major investor.

Earlier in 2018, Ellison described Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a "close friend," and defended him from critics. When Musk acquired Twitter — now X — in 2022, Ellison offered to invest $1 billion.

Musk went on to help Ellison reset his forgotten password, according to biographer Walter Isaacson.

 

In December 2020, Ellison revealed that he moved to Lanai full-time.

The announcement came after Oracle decided to move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, leading Oracle employees to ask Ellison if he planned to move to Texas too.

"The answer is no," Ellison wrote in a company-wide email. "I've moved to the state of Hawaii and I'll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai."

He signed the email: "Mahalo, Larry."

 

He left Tesla's board in August 2022.

In a proxy filing in June 2022, the electric vehicle maker revealed that Ellison would be leaving the board. Since then, he and Musk have appeared to maintain their close relationship.

Oracle had a record-breaking 2023, and cemented itself in the new age of artificial intelligence.

Oracle's shares continued to hit records, CNBC reported. The company proved that it's not going any where any time soon.

In 2023, Oracle backed OpenAI rival Cohere.

Oracle joined other tech giants, like Salesforce, in backing the tech startup in June 2023. It began offering generative AI to its clients based on tech made by Cohere.

"Cohere and Oracle are working together to make it very, very easy for enterprise customers to train their own specialized large language models while protecting the privacy of their training data," Ellison previously said.

Oracle announced in April that it would be moving its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

Despite its big move to Austin only four years ago, Ellison said that Oracle is planning to move its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

In April 2024, the exec announced that Oracle has plans for a "huge campus" in Nashville that will one day serve as the software giant's world headquarters. The company relocated from the San Francisco area to Austin, Texas in 2020.

"It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry," Ellison said at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville, according to CNBC.

Matt Weinberger and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this story.

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• Trump's wouldn't dismiss the possibility of political violence this election season if he loses.
• He said in an interview with TIME that "it always depends on the fairness of an election."
• Trump also reiterated the possibility he'd pardon the 800+ sentenced Capitol rioters.

Former President Donald Trump said in a new interview that he's not ruling out the possibility of election-related violence if he loses to President Joe Biden in November.

TIME released a lengthy interview with the former president on Tuesday conducted mostly on April 12 at his Mar-a-Lago Club. The conversation focuses on his ambitions in a possible second term, like mass deportations, getting rid of "bad people" in government, and how he might fire his attorney general if they refused to prosecute someone at his command.

When first pressed about the prospect of "political violence" resulting from the upcoming presidential election, Trump ruled out the possibility.

"I think we're gonna have a big victory," he said. "And I think there will be no violence."

Two weeks later, Trump spoke with the TIME reporter for a follow-up and the reporter asked specifically if violence might erupt if he doesn't defeat Biden.

"I think we're going to win," he said. "And if we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election."

Trump also said that he'd "absolutely" consider pardoning each of the more than 800 sentenced January 6 rioters, an idea he's brought up before.

"If somebody was evil and bad, I would look at that differently," he said.

In the years following the Capitol riot, the threat of political and election-based violence doesn't appear to have diminished.

A 2023 poll from the United States Association of Former Members of Congress and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that a whopping 84% of ex-members of Congress were worried about election-related violence in 2024. In total, 94% of Democrats said they were "very" or "somewhat" concerned about the threat compared to 74% of Republicans.

Former DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked while defending the Capitol on January 6, told Business Insider in February that he was certain election-related violence would return this year, adding that it "never stopped after January 6."

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• The wide-ranging potential of AI could dramatically change the way workplaces operate.
• Three experts told Business Insider that properly trained and integrated AI could improve its efficacy.
• The discussion was part of BI's event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies and held on April 23.
• Click here to watch a recording of the full event.

Artificial intelligence has become a centerpiece of conversation in almost every industry. As the new technology accelerates in skill and ubiquity, business leaders are racing to figure out what the relationship between workers and AI will look like in years to come.

Business Insider's virtual event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies, brought together a panel of experts to discuss the trials, triumphs, and future of AI.

"This technology has the opportunity to reinvent how we interact with the digital world," said Matt Baker, the senior vice president of AI enablement at Dell Technologies. He discussed the major ways in which Dell is integrating AI into its processes, from increasing productivity for developers to automating content.

He was joined by Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, the medical director of advanced technologies at Northwestern Medicine, who has seen AI bring major changes to the rigid systems of medicine. "One underappreciated aspect of creating AIs, which you deal with every day when you're doing it, is deep integration with the legacy systems that produce the data."

This approach is similar to the issues faced by fellow panelist Peter Miscovich, the global consulting practice lead, future of work for JLL. "As we look at the real estate lifecycle, we're really looking to reinvent the entire lifecycle," he said. "There are so many latent processes, and if you will, legacy systems and buildings are physical. They don't change that quickly, and they certainly don't change overnight."

The conversation, moderated by BI's future-of-work correspondent Tim Paradis, tackled some of the biggest concerns regarding AI's integration into the workforce. Baker said he supported the idea that people must be "technological optimists" when approaching AI.

"The history of technology innovation is not one of displacing humans and reducing employment," he said. "It is of improving the human condition, broadening the economy, and improving our lives overall."

The expansion of AI also presents opportunities for a new field of occupations within changing industries. "There are predictions that we could have two times, three times, even four times the employment demand for new job growth as a result of gen-AI and AI ethicists, AI translators, AI mediators, AI co-creative, AI legal, and compliance experts," Miscovich said.

Artificial intelligence can only be as useful as its design allows. All three panelists expressed the importance of education initiatives across all industries and workers to learn how to use AI and evaluate how it can best be integrated into existing processes. Baker described this approach as "smart architecture": an initiative of reinvention that builds better systems from the ground up with a human-centered approach.

Etemadi said he hopes well-designed AI will make people feel "empowered" to use the technology more. "They'll give you more feedback early on, which leads to more change management and more positive feedback," he added.

The panelists discussed how past innovations like the big data age and social media could teach us lessons about how to better work with AI. Working with AI from the ground floor can allow businesses to design the parameters that will guide AI's future presence in the workplace.

"We really need to think through how this is going to impact our society and all facets of our society and those ethics and those outcomes," said Miscovich. That modeling, he added, will be "so critical to our future success with artificial intelligence."

Artificial intelligence could become a game changer for almost every industry. But exciting opportunities require an eager approach. "You determine what models to use, you determine what the application looks like, you control your destiny," said Baker. "So don't be a consumer, be a practitioner."

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• Russia has increasingly relied on glide-bomb strikes to hammer Ukrainian front-line positions and cities.
• A recent Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian airbase suggest Kyiv is going after the bombs. 
• Britain's defense ministry said multiple glide-bomb kits appeared to have been destroyed in the Saturday attack.

Ukraine's massive weekend drone attack on a Russian airbase deep behind enemy lines suggests Kyiv may be trying to curb the threat of Moscow's devastating glide bombs, according to new Western intelligence.

Russia has increasingly relied on glide-bomb strikes to hammer Ukrainian positions in recent months. These munitions are particularly difficult to intercept because they have short flight times, small radar signatures, and non-ballistic trajectories.

Glide bombs have flight control surfaces and are known as standoff weapons, meaning that Russian warplanes can release them at a distance beyond the range of Ukraine's air-defense systems. Shooting down the planes before they release the weapon or striking them on the ground are really the only ways to defeat the threat. Destroying the bombs before they get in the air is an option as well.

Ukrainian forces on Saturday reportedly fired dozens of attack drones at the Kushchyovskaya airfield and two oil refineries in southwest Russia, quite a distance from the front lines. It marked the latest of Kyiv's long-range attacks, which have targeted Moscow's military and energy facilities.

The Kushchyovskaya base is home to Russia's Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets, which "are used daily in strike missions against Ukrainian front-line positions, including the heavy use of glide bombs," Britain's defense ministry wrote in a Tuesday intelligence update. The ministry said footage from a storage location at the airfield indicated that multiple glide-bomb kits were destroyed in Saturday's attack.

It was not immediately clear whether any of the aircraft were damaged or destroyed in the attack. Satellite imagery of the airfield shared by Brady Africk, an open-source intelligence analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, showed some damage to the facility.

Russian fighters from Kushchyovskaya and other similar bases "typically conduct 100 to 150 sorties per day, a significant percentage of those launching munitions all along the front lines as Russia attempts to force breakthroughs through sheer firepower," Britain's defense ministry said.

"Ukraine's ability to disrupt Russian tactical air, particularly glide bomb usage, is key the the wider defense of the front lines," the UK continued. "This successful strike is likely to force further Russian dispersals of fighters as well as reallocation of air-defense assets to plug gaps."

Glide bombs have been a headache for Kyiv's forces for much of the war, but Russia has significantly ramped up its attacks using these weapons over the past few months. These weapons were a particular problem around the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka earlier this year, which Moscow captured after a bloody monthslong campaign.

Unlike more traditional gravity bombs, which are dropped above a target, glide bombs can be launched from miles behind the front lines, limiting an aircraft's exposure to enemy air defenses. Russia's defense ministry said in March that it began increasing production of several types of munitions — including 6,600-pound ones — that can be modified and turned into glide bombs.

Saturday's strike on the Kushchyovskaya airbase is not the first time Ukraine has gone after Russian airbases hosting fighter-bombers that can drop glide bombs. In early April, Ukraine staged a huge drone attack on the Morozovsk airbase in Rostov, hundreds of miles inside Russia.

While the extent of the damage was ultimately unclear, the attack appeared to underscore Ukraine's desire to stomp out the glide bomb threat before the aircraft could take flight. Experts have warned that Russian glide bombs pose a tremendous threat to Ukrainian forces.

Russian forces have "significantly changed tactical aviation operations in Ukraine with their mass use of glide bombs, allowing fixed-wing aircraft to more safely conduct strikes from further in the rear," analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said on Saturday.

"These glide bomb strikes will continue to play a critically important role in supporting Russian ground operations this summer despite the likely improved air-defense capabilities that Ukrainian forces will be able to leverage against Russian aircraft as additional Western air defense materiel arrives," the analysts wrote in their assessment.

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• Democrats could end up with a "trifecta" in 2025, allowing them to once again pass party-line bills.
• They passed tons of major bills during the first two years of Biden's presidency.
• Here's what they could do with another two years in full control of the federal government.

There's lots of talk — and rightfully so — about what America might look like if former President Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office.

But there's a not-insignificant chance that not only does Trump lose again, but that Democrats find themselves once again in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2025.

It's not the most likely outcome, but it's one worth taking seriously, especially given the retirement of Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two key Democratic obstacles to President Joe Biden's agenda who will be out of office next year.

Here's how Democrats could win a trifecta again — and what could happen if they do.

How Biden could win — and have Democratic majorities in Congress

As it stands now, Trump has a slight lead over Biden nationally, and the incumbent president is facing an array of challenges as he seeks a second term. But the election is still six months away, polls shift, and who knows what could happen between now and then?

Democrats are broadly seen as favored to retake the House, with nearly 20 House Republican incumbents fighting to hold on in districts won by Biden in 2020. Several of those seats are in California and New York, while another two are in Arizona, where Democrats are expecting major political upside from a possible ballot measure on abortion rights.

The Senate will be a tougher lift. With Manchin's retirement, Democrats are all but guaranteed to lose at least one Senate seat, cutting any potential majority down to 50-50 — and it's only a majority if Biden wins, and Vice President Kamala Harris is around to break tie votes.

Democrats' chances essentially hinge on keeping tough seats in Ohio and Montana, two states that Trump won handily in both 2016 and 2020, while maintaining their seats everywhere else, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

It will be tough, but it's within the realm of possibility that Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio hang on — as they did in 2018 — and that Democrats end up with a slim majority again.

Democrats may have the votes to codify abortion protections nationwide

The lowest-hanging fruit for Democrats, if they regain a trifecta, would be to pass legislation protecting abortion rights nationwide — likely something resembling the Women's Health Protection Act, which would overrule existing state-level abortion bans that have emerged in the years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Biden supports it, and House Democrats have already voted for it twice, once in 2021 and again in 2022.

The reason they weren't able to pass the bill in the Senate in 2022 was because Manchin and Sinema opposed eliminating the chamber's "filibuster" rule, which requires 60 votes to pass legislation. Manchin was the only Democrat who opposed the bill outright.

Aside from national abortion protections, Democrats might take a shot at another legislative item stymied by Manchin and Sinema in 2022 — voting rights.

Democrats accomplished a lot during the first two years of Biden's presidency. But there's plenty they still want to do.

In contrast with the past 16 months of divided government, Biden's first two years came with lots of legislative accomplishments, including unprecedented climate legislation, a massive infrastructure bill, legislation to invest in the country's semiconductor manufacturing system, and more.

There are still a million more things that Democrats want to do — or have been blocked from doing before.

For one indicator of how far the party might go with a trifecta, take a look at the Congressional Progressive Caucus's recently released "Progressive Proposition Agenda."

It's a laundry list of progressive policy ideas, including items that were included in the original "Build Back Better" social spending and climate bill that Manchin and Sinema ultimately helped kill.

That includes reinstating the expanded child tax credit, investing $250 billion in affordable housing, passing legislation to strengthen workers' unions, legalizing marijuana, granting statehood to Washington, DC, and providing full tuition at public colleges and universities.

Not all of these policies would be enacted, and it's difficult to say for sure what Biden would pursue with total control in 2025.

But progressives showed during the first two years of Biden's presidency that they held more sway than any other faction of the party, and it will be worth paying close attention to them again whenever Democrats regain power — whether that's next year or several years from now.

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• A Japan Airlines flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled after the captain got drunk in a hotel.
• A replacement pilot could not be found in time for the morning departure.
• The airline told Japanese media that police were called due to the pilot's disorderly behavior.

A Japan Airlines flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled after a captain got drunk at a hotel bar and received a warning from police, the airline said, according to Japanese media.

The Mainichi, which cited a statement from Japan Airlines, reported that the captain dined in Dallas last week with other crew members.

According to the outlet, the airline said he then continued to drink throughout the evening in the hotel lounge where the crew were staying and, later, in his hotel room.

At around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, a hotel employee asked the group to be quiet, but the pilot's disorderly conduct prompted a call to the police, The Mainichi reported.

According to statements provided by the airline to Japanese media, police questioned the man and warned him not to cause further problems.

A spokesperson for Japan Airlines told Business Insider by email that the pilot received a "verbal warning from the police upon the hotel's request."

The spokesperson said the decision to cancel the flight stemmed from the need to assess the captain's physical and mental well-being, not because the pilot was under the influence at the time of the flight.

"It is true that the captain consumed alcohol," the spokesperson said, while noting that "there was a sufficient interval between alcohol consumption and the scheduled duty time."

Japan Airlines told The Mainichi it could not find a replacement pilot in time for the Wednesday morning departure.

Data from the flight-tracking website FlightAware shows that the flight, due to depart at 11:05 a.m. local time on Wednesday, was canceled.

The airline spokesperson told BI that it arranged for passengers to travel on alternative flights.

"We are fully aware of the seriousness of this situation," the spokesperson said. "In order to prevent such an incident from happening again, we will thoroughly implement measures to prevent recurrence and work to restore trust in our airline."

Although a relatively rare occurrence, there have been several recent incidents of pilots reporting for duty under the influence.

In March, a Delta Air Lines captain admitted to turning up for a flight while over the legal alcohol limit.

He was arrested after failing a breathalyzer test in June last year, and was later sentenced to 10 months in prison.

In 2023, a United Airlines pilot who showed up to work under the influence was handed a six-month suspended prison sentence by a French court.

Le Parisien reported that he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.132%, more than six times the legal limit for pilots in Europe and three times the Federal Aviation Administration's limit.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, a pilot's ability to fly a plane is significantly impaired by alcohol use.

It said that the number of serious errors pilots commit dramatically increases at or above concentrations of 0.04% blood alcohol.

Tuesday, April 30, 2024: This article has been updated with a response from Japan Airlines.

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• The Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York, was built by Frederick Vanderbilt in the 1890s.
• The 45,000-square-foot Gilded Age mansion is located on 153 acres of land in the Hudson Valley.
• The National Park Service offers tours of the mansion to the public.

During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in America with a net worth of $100 million, or around $200 billion today — more money than the US Treasury had at the time.

After Cornelius' death in 1937, his son William Vanderbilt took over the businesses and doubled his father's fortune. He died the wealthiest private individual in the world in 1885.

William's son, Frederick Vanderbilt, and his wife, Louise, purchased a 153-acre Hyde Park property in 1895. Construction on the mansion began in 1895 and was finished three years later.

The mansion and its grounds are now owned by the National Park Service, which offers tours of the property. I visited the Vanderbilt mansion in February 2023 to see its opulent rooms for myself.

The Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York, was home to one of America's wealthiest families during the Gilded Age.

In total, Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt spent $660,000 to build the home (more than $23 million in today's money) and $1.5 million (around $53 million today) to furnish it.

Today, the Vanderbilt Mansion is owned and operated by the National Park Service.

Frederick and Louise didn't have children. After Frederick's death in 1938, he left the house to Louise's niece, Margaret Van Alen. The Vanderbilts' neighbor in Hyde Park, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, then suggested preserving the estate by converting it into a national park.

The Vanderbilt Mansion opened to the public in 1940, according to the National Park Service.

I bought my tour ticket at the Pavilion Visitor Center, which once served as a guest house.

The only way to see inside the mansion is through a guided tour with a park ranger.

The hourlong tours cost $15 per person and are offered daily at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. There are no reservations — tickets are sold at the visitor center on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The visitor center featured a Vanderbilt family tree and information about their other homes across the US.

The Vanderbilts' largest home, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, features 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces.

The Vanderbilt family also had homes in New York City, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

The tour began outside the Vanderbilt Mansion, where our park-ranger guide told us about the construction of the 45,000-square-foot home.

The building was designed by architects McKim, Mead & White and built by Norcross Brothers. The exterior is made of Indiana limestone.

The Vanderbilts used the home as a seasonal escape in the spring and fall. It has six floors and a total of 54 rooms, according to the National Park Service.

We then walked through the front door into an opulent entrance hall.

The oval-shaped entrance hall was furnished with green marble imported from Italy.

The space was full of decorative tapestries, sculptures, and other artifacts.

Unlike most residences at the time, the mansion had running water and electricity.

Frederick used his office to manage the affairs of the Hyde Park estate.

The office contained a private bathroom that led into his den.

Frederick's den functioned as his private leisure space.

The den included a small library of books and a moose head mounted to the wall.

The dining room sat 18 people, which is believed to be the largest gathering the Vanderbilts hosted at Hyde Park.

The Vanderbilts hosted their first housewarming dinner party in May 1899, and only entertained about once per season.

It also features a 400-year-old Persian carpet, one of the largest known Islamic carpets in the world.

The carpet measures about 20 by 40 feet.

After dinner parties, guests would enjoy coffee and games of charades in the formal living room.

Decorated with antique Renaissance furniture, the living room featured Circassian walnut panels on the walls.

The ground floor also included an 18th-century-style French salon where Louise would occasionally have tea with guests or spend time alone.

Frederick and Louise had a permanent residence in Paris, which inspired the Louis XIV-style decor.

Vanderbilt butler Alfred Martin told the National Park Service that when the door to the salon was closed, "that was a sure indication that Mrs. Vanderbilt did not want to be disturbed."

A grand staircase led to the second floor.

The railing of the staircase was coated in velvet to make even climbing the stairs a comfortable, luxurious experience.

An octagon-shaped balcony overlooked the entrance hall, with a similarly shaped skylight above.

The second floor housed Frederick and Louise's bedrooms, as well as her dressing room and several guest rooms.

In the winter months, when the Vanderbilts spent time in their New York City townhouse, the home's furniture was covered with linens.

When I visited in January, the guest bedrooms were staged to appear the way they would have at that time of year. It took servants weeks to cover and uncover every item in the home with custom-made sheets.

Louise's bed was surrounded by a railing, as was often the case in royal bedchambers in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In European palaces, railings around royal beds were utilized during daily ceremonies when a monarch woke up or during royal births. In Louise's bedroom, the railing was merely a decorative homage to the French architecture she loved.

Her room connected to Frederick's through an adjoining door. Frederick's room was closed for restoration when I visited.

We concluded the tour in the basement, where servants would prepare the Vanderbilts' meals in the kitchen.

The basement is also where servants stored the estate's wine and spirits, did laundry, and brought food up to the ground floor through a dumbwaiter.

The mansion employed 18 servants total.

Stepping out onto the grounds of the mansion, I could see why the Vanderbilts relished their seasonal country home.

The mansion is situated on 153 acres of land in the scenic Hudson Valley.

As our tour guide put it, "It's like they get to live in a beautiful landscape painting whenever they wish."

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Speaker Mike Johnson's job is probably safe, at least until November.

In a statement on Tuesday morning, the top three House Democratic leaders — including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — said that they would oppose any effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust Johnson from the speakership.

"The time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction," the three leader said. "We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed."

The leaders' statement signals that the vast majority of Democrats will do the same.

It's a stark contrast to October, when every Democrat present voted for Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida's motion to vacate then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company's top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called "AI agents" — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.

"Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers," Gates wrote. "They're also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons."

At the time, the memo struck those who read it as far-fetched. "It seemed super futuristic," a Microsoft executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. Microsoft had been widely mocked for its previous attempts at creating personal "agents," from its failed Office assistant Clippy to its racist chatbot, Tay. Few at the time would have believed a new generation of these agents would transform Microsoft.

Today, though, it's clear that Gates' secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial-intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world's most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI's GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. "Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote," the executive said.

That's not by accident.

Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft's AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company's operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft's crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI. In early 2023, when Microsoft debuted a version of its search engine Bing turbocharged by the same technology as ChatGPT, throwing down the gauntlet against competitors like Google, Gates, executives said, was pivotal in setting the plan in motion. While Nadella might be the public face of the company's AI success — the Oz who built the yellow-brick road to a $3 trillion juggernaut — Gates has been the man behind the curtain.

"What you read is not what's happening in reality," another Microsoft executive said. "Satya and the entire senior leadership team lean on Gates very significantly. His opinion is sought every time we make a major change."

When Nadella took over the reins from Steve Ballmer a decade ago, Microsoft was seen as a dinosaur of the computer age it had helped pioneer. Peter Thiel bashed the company as "a bet against technological innovation." So Nadella, who had worked at Microsoft since 1992, turned to his former boss for help. On the day Nadella became CEO, he asked Gates to spend 30% of his time as a technical advisor, in part to help motivate his staff. "When I say, 'Hey, I want you to go run this by Bill,' I know they're going to do their best job prepping for it," he told Wired at the time.

In 2020, when Gates stepped down as chair of Microsoft's board, Nadella showered him with praise. The company, Nadella promised, would "continue to benefit from Bill's ongoing technical passion and advice to drive our products and services forward."

But a year later, Nadella's embrace of Gates appeared to change — at least publicly. In 2021, as Gates and his wife, Melinda, were divorcing, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates had been forced to step down as the company investigated him for having an affair with an employee. As news of Gates' misconduct went viral, the squeaky-clean reputation he and his public-relations team had meticulously crafted over the years unraveled. Several female employees came forward with stories of Gates asking them out, and his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, including a flight on Epstein's private jet, came under renewed scrutiny. Suddenly, Nadella's mentor had become his greatest liability, and he and Microsoft quickly distanced themselves from Gates.

"The Microsoft of 2021 is very different from the Microsoft of 2000," Nadella said at the time. "The power dynamic in the workplace is not something that can be abused in any form." The company's greatest responsibility, he later added, is "cultivating a culture where everyone is empowered to do meaningful work."

But among the people whom Nadella secretly empowered to do meaningful work, BI has learned, was Gates himself. Rather than banishing him from the company, Nadella continued to draw on his advice and expertise — making Gates a key player in Microsoft's efforts to vie for dominance in AI.

The common lore about Microsoft's marriage with OpenAI is that it was brokered by Kevin Scott, the company's chief technology officer. Scott had known Altman for years, and in summer 2018, he arranged a meeting between Altman and Nadella. Later that year, the three men hammered out an initial deal, and the rest is history.

According to two executives, Gates' memo treated as gospel, sparking Microsoft's push to take the lead in the AI arms race.

But lost in that origin story is that Gates had been regularly meeting with OpenAI since 2016. Ever since he published "The Road Ahead" in 1995, Gates had been dreaming of a world in which everyone would navigate the internet using software that would "have a personality you'll be able to talk to in one form or another" and that would "learn about your requirements and preferences in much the way that a human assistant does." Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft had launched several primitive and widely ridiculed versions of agents — from Rover, a cartoon dog that guided you through Windows 95, to Clippy, the most hated paperclip of all time. Now, it seemed, OpenAI might offer Microsoft a way to help forge the AI future that Gates had long envisioned. After the two companies formed their partnership, OpenAI's leaders conducted regular presentations for Gates at his 66,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, keeping him apprised of critical benchmarks and significant obstacles.

It was Gates, in fact, who played a pivotal role in turning OpenAI and Microsoft into a power couple. In mid-2022 — two years after he was ousted from the board — he privately challenged Altman and OpenAI to create a model capable of passing an Advanced Placement biology exam. Gates didn't think it could be done. Altman and OpenAI debuted GPT-4 for the first time outside the company at Gates' house in August 2022 during a dinner; Nadella was among the guests. When it aced the test, Gates was shocked, calling it "the most stunning demo I've ever seen in my life."

The demo prompted Gates to write another memo — what one former executive referred to as "the memo" — spelling out how Microsoft should use GPT-4. Gates stressed that the large language model, trained on the entirety of the public internet, could finally usher in the era of personal agents. "Think of it as a digital personal assistant," he wrote in a version of that memo later posted on his blog. "It will see your latest emails, know about the meetings you attend, read what you read, and read the things you don't want to bother with."

According to two executives, Gates' words were treated as gospel, helping spark Microsoft's push to take the lead in the AI arms race. Soon after Gates' dinner, Nadella hosted a meeting on Microsoft's campus, where he challenged the teams to incorporate AI into search, cybersecurity, and its Microsoft 365 suite of business applications, which includes Word and Outlook.

Early the following year, Microsoft introduced a new version of its beleaguered search engine, Bing — now turbocharged with a GPT-enabled agent that would later be named Copilot. Almost overnight, thanks to Gates' maneuvering, Microsoft had transformed Bing from a search engine on life support to an AI-powered tool that had a chance to give Google a run for its money.

In February 2023, Microsoft held an event at its headquarters similar to a Steve Jobs iPhone launch. Nadella, beaming, declared war on Google. Gates did not appear to be in attendance.

Today, Gates remains close with Altman, who visits his home a few times a year, and OpenAI seeks his counsel on developments. There's a "tight coupling" between Gates and OpenAI, a person familiar with the relationship said. "Sam and Bill are good friends. OpenAI takes his opinion and consult overall seriously." OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed OpenAI continues to meet with Gates.

Last fall, Nadella and Microsoft scrambled to quell the chaos when OpenAI's board abruptly fired Altman. Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson, told BI that if Gates was speaking with Altman, it was not on behalf of the company. "Bill is not at Microsoft and not involved here," Shaw told BI at the time.

During the five-day fracas that followed, Gates — with his own recent experience with an ouster — reached out to Altman to offer support as he negotiated a return to the leadership of OpenAI.

Today, insiders say Gates' sway at Microsoft extends far beyond OpenAI.

Executives from across the company — including its business-applications boss, Charles Lamanna; its chief scientist, Jaime Teevan; its Teams chat-app boss, Jeff Teper; and its head of cybersecurity, Charlie Bell — meet regularly with Gates to review products. He's also personally involved in recruiting and retaining important executives for Microsoft. "Gates is very involved with product reviews and one-on-ones with executives," a former executive said. Last year, Gates told Forbes he spent about 10% of his time in Redmond, Washington, advising Microsoft on product road maps.

Gates over years has also pushed Microsoft to be more consumer-focused, despite many consumer technology failures. In March, many observers were shocked when the company announced it was hiring Mustafa Suleyman, who cofounded DeepMind and spent many years at Google, to lead a new consumer-AI organization. "Bill G. thinks the major opportunity is consumers," one insider said. "If you look at the new consumer-AI organization, that looks like Bill's influence on Satya." Shaw said Gates was not involved in hiring Suleyman.

All this is a far cry from the perception that Gates has been kept at a distance ever since he was ousted from the board. Gates, who has continued to keep a low profile, has emerged from the scandal largely unscathed; today, the allegations of his misconduct aren't even mentioned in his Wikipedia entry. The Microsoft of 2024, it appears, is not as different from the Microsoft of 2021 as Nadella would have everyone believe. Gates is not gone, but his checkered past has been largely forgotten.

Shaw said there hadn't been any substantial changes in Gates' role as a technical advisor since he left the board in 2020. The "insistence on portraying the role of Bill Gates as 'pulling strings' at Microsoft," he told BI, "is fundamentally inaccurate and at odds with reality." Gates declined an interview request and his representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Near the end of "The Road Ahead," Gates got existential. "It's a little scary that as computer technology has moved ahead, there's never been a leader from one era who was also a leader in the next," he lamented at the ripe age of 39. "So from a historical perspective, I guess Microsoft is disqualified from leading in the highway era of the Information Age."

Then the middle-aged Gates revealed his true ambition: "I want to defy historical tradition."

Now approaching 70, Gates is still defying history — this time from behind the scenes. And if the revived fortunes of Microsoft are any indication, he appears to be winning.

April 30, 2024: This story has been updated with an additional comment from Microsoft.

Ashley Stewart is a chief technology correspondent at Business Insider. She reports on enterprise technology companies including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services from Seattle.

Are you a Microsoft employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Ashley Stewart via email (astewart@businessinsider.com), or send a secure message from a nonwork device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242).

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• Reports that the US purchased 81 combat aircraft from Kazakhstan are likely false, experts said. 
• They cited Kazakhstan's deep economic ties to Russia and the report's sources.
• Kazakhstan has denied selling aircraft to Ukraine, saying foreign companies were not allowed to bid.

Reports that the US acquired 81 obsolete Soviet-era combat aircraft from Kazakhstan are likely false, according to military analysts.

On Sunday, the Kyiv Post reported that Kazakhstan had auctioned off 117 Soviet-era fighter and bomber aircraft for a reported fee of one billion tenge, or $2.26 million, of which 81 were purchased by the US.

The outlet cited reports from the Ukrainian Telegram channel Insider UA and the Russian news site Reporter.

The Kyiv Post said the reason for the US purchase was not made public but that the aircraft would "likely" be transferred to Ukraine, which is fighting back against Russia's full-scale invasion.

But Kazspetsexport, Kazakhstan's state-owned weapons importer and exporter, denied selling military airplanes to Ukraine in a later statement, saying that foreign companies were not allowed to bid.

According to Francisco Olmos, a research fellow at The Foreign Policy Center specializing in Central Asian Affairs, it's "very" hard to establish whether the sale actually happened.

But he said that Kazspetsexport's denial "lends weight to the fact that such a purchase by the US did not take place."

He also said he doesn't see why Kazakhstan would indirectly provide spare parts for Ukrainian jets.

Given Ukraine's reliance on Soviet-era weapons, the Kyiv Post had suggested that the aircraft could either serve as a source of spare parts or be strategically deployed as decoys at airfields.

"Astana has kept a balanced stance during the conflict, and this would significantly change that," Olmos said. "Let's not forget Russia and Kazakhstan continue to have close ties, politically and economically."

Alexander Libman, a professor of Russian and East European Politics at the Free University of Berlin, said he would "seriously" doubt that such a deal could take place.

"Kazakhstan was extremely cautious about not creating tensions with both Russia and the Western countries, and supplying weapons to Ukraine would be a clear violation of this strategy," he told BI.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its neighbors, including Kazakhstan, have trod a fine line, trying to keep an officially neutral position while, in some cases, strengthening their ties with the West.

Some Central Asian countries, like Kazakhstan, have even offered humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

However, out of fear of a backlash from Russia, they have declined to provide military equipment, Mark Temnycky, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, told BI.

He said these countries saw Russia's invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, and with large ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking populations of their own, fear they could be next.

Russia has also deepened economic ties with the countries, especially Kazakhstan, with Russia-Kazakhstan trade valued at $26 billion and $27 billion in 2022 and 2023, record numbers.

Balancing economic ties with Russia and closer relations with the West puts Kazakhstan on an "increasingly difficult tightrope," Kate Mallinson, an associate fellow of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme, told BI.

She also suggested that reports of a US-Kazakhstan deal are likely part of a disinformation campaign from Russia aimed at "driving a wedge" between Kazakhstan and its neighbors, and putting more pressure on the country to toe the line.

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