By Jenny Strasburg | Photographs by Mary Turner for WSJ

OXFORD, England -- When the American tech titan Larry Ellison showed up here wanting to buy a historic pub called the Eagle and Child that was a beloved hangout of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, he was told it wasn't for sale.

The response from the billionaire's camp: Everything's for sale.

And it was. Ellison now owns the pub after ponying up GBP8 million, or $10.7 million now, far above its market value, according to records and people familiar with the matter.

Trustees of the University of Oxford college that owned the pub for two decades debated the sale. They touched on the reputational risks of selling a famous British treasure, especially to an American billionaire. But the offer, described by college financiers as unsolicited and "exceptional," easily prevailed.

Ellison's pub purchase, in October 2023, turned out to be a modest indicator of his ambitions for linking up with one of the world's most famous universities and reshaping his own philanthropic legacy.

About 4 miles from the pub, in a science office park outside the city center, the Oracle founder is bankrolling a massive for-profit research campus costing upward of $1.3 billion, the planned home of his Ellison Institute of Technology by 2027.

Ellison announced two years ago his plans to shift the institute's hub to Oxford from its smaller site in Los Angeles. The venture aims to tackle issues ranging from food security and healthcare to artificial intelligence and robotics, operating as a sustainable private business powered by Oracle technology.

Since then, Ellison has been splashing out hundreds of millions on real estate in and around Oxford and luring top academics from the publicly funded university to come work for him for outsize salaries.

The spending has only intensified suspicions among some Oxford insiders and university supporters that the 900-year-old institution's elite faculty and valuable research could be hollowed out by a man whose roughly $275 billion in wealth is mind-boggling even by U.S. standards.

The alliance has had something of a rocky start.

In early 2024, Ellison tapped an influential, longtime Oxford academic to oversee his institute -- the twice-knighted Canadian-born geneticist John Bell. His presence helped give the project a sheen of academic prestige and insights into university politics. It lent Oxford the comfort of an insider crossing over who would still look out for the university.

But Bell stepped down recently, after clashing with Ellison over operations and staffing for months, people close to the matter say. They say tensions flared over the mix of people being brought into the institute with academic backgrounds versus entrepreneurs experienced at building profitable companies on ambitious timelines.

Bell has complained to colleagues in recent weeks about Ellison's decisions to fire senior staff in strategy, finance and other areas without involving him.

Bell didn't respond to requests for comment. In a statement Monday, he called it a "very challenging project" and said he was handing the reins to Dr. Santa Ono, former president of the University of Michigan, who last month was named the institute's new global president.

The Oxford institute's sleek, modern plans, from the firm of renowned British architect Norman Foster, include an oncology clinic, auditorium, laboratories, library, classrooms and park space with a formal pond surrounded by trees, all designed to host as many as 7,000 scientists.

That rivals the size of Oxford University's entire academic research staff.

By showering Silicon Valley cash on Oxford, Ellison is aiming to transform a tradition-bound, often parochial place that has long strived to produce even a fraction of the fast-growing spinoffs that emerge from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ellison said he is just getting started. The 81-year-old announced in July that he is now directing more of his fortune -- the world's second largest -- to the institute, after years ago pledging to give away at least half of his money to charity.

Ellison said he will now concentrate his wealth on his Oxford institute, funding technologies that could be spun out into businesses that he controls.

"I believe this will improve our chances of delivering practical solutions to the problems of hunger, healthcare and climate change," Ellison said in a post on X.

Terms of the Oxford-Ellison agreement aren't public. But according to people familiar with the arrangement, Oxford stands to gain from GBP20 million or more a year toward joint research projects through 2030. It could earn around 1% of profits generated by EIT through the partnership, depending on the commercial success of research programs and spinouts.

The deal allows Ellison to bring on Oxford academics, including senior department faculty and startup founders, as part-time employees. Ellison is also funding scholarships for students to attend Oxford.

"This could completely revolutionize Oxford," said Jane Khedair, who runs the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School.

But Khedair cautioned that balancing Ellison's commercial interests with Oxford's public obligations will be tricky.

"I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion that this is the right way forward," Khedair said. "The more money that's at stake, the bigger the gun you have to your head."

An Oxford spokesman said the Ellison Institute partnership is aligned with Oxford's public mission and that the university maintains academic and institutional independence.

This week, Oxford and the institute announced funding of GBP118 million for Oxford University medical researchers to work alongside the institute on using artificial intelligence and Oracle technology to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines. Intellectual property developed through the project will belong to the Ellison Institute, people familiar with the agreement say.

The funding rivals some of the biggest grants Oxford University has received.

Ellison's net worth has surged with the AI boom, catapulting him to behind only his friend Elon Musk on the world's rich lists. Ellison owns more than 40% of Oracle shares.

Ellison initially showed up in Oxford in the early days of the pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter. Ellison was introduced around town by his friend Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

Around that time, Ellison and his wife, Jolin, also known as Keren Zhu, set about putting down roots in Oxford. They told people around town that they were making arrangements for a family member to attend an elite private school in town, the eventual target being England's famed Eton College. They shopped for country estates.

Ellison later dropped GBP162 million on a listed office building on London's upscale St. James's Square -- in the city's priciest office-property corridor. The space is earmarked for the Ellison Institute, according to the lawyers who handled the purchase.

Among other appealing aspects of the U.K., Ellison sees its brainpower as a bargain. He has told scientists and university supporters that for every single software engineer he could hire in Silicon Valley, he can get four or five in the U.K. for the same money.

The institute caused ripples in U.K. academic circles earlier this year when it recruited a star chemistry and biology professor named Jason Chin from Cambridge, with senior Oxford administrators buzzing that the university couldn't have afforded him without Ellison's money. Chin, founder of a biotech startup, is now also part-time faculty at Oxford, where he studied as an undergraduate.

Strategic and financial partnerships between universities and companies and private interests aren't unusual. Many tech and drug companies, as well as individual megadonors, have sponsored specific research or funded academic institutes. In the U.S., companies recently have been stepping in to backfill funding holes left by sweeping cuts to government grants.

But the scale of Ellison's plans and his explicit focus on creating for-profit companies place the Oxford experiment in a different field. In recent months, he has been hands-on with the institute's development, getting involved in such minutiae as selecting wall decor and office furniture for the yet-to-be-built campus.

More than 40% of publicly-funded universities in England ran a budget deficit last year, a figure that has been rising. Oxford fares better than most, but remains constrained by a government-imposed cap on tuition for U.K. full-time undergraduates and the country's own fiscal woes.

At a July meeting welcoming senior business-school faculty this summer, the university's top administrator in charge of innovation, Chas Bountra, told the group that Oxford has to attract more wealthy funders to compete on the world stage, according to a person who was present.

"We've got to make this Ellison project a success," he said.

If Ellison and other outsiders make money in the process, Bountra has told colleagues, that is fine, and maybe will bring more billionaires to Oxford's doorstep.

Scaffolding envelopes the Bird and Baby -- the longtime nickname of the Eagle and Child -- wrapped in a decorative screen depicting the pub's historic features. The Ellison Institute has said the upstairs will be meeting space for Ellison-funded scholars and academics.

Downstairs, Ellison has promised to safeguard the property's 300-year legacy as a public watering hole, but with better food. The refurbishment is being overseen by Foster, his firm's first pub job.

Write to Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 06, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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