Ellison’s $2.5bn Bet - Can Santa Ono turn Oxford into Europe’s Silicon Valley?

Larry Ellison built Oracle into a cornerstone of the modern tech economy. Now he is making a $2.5 billion bet on Oxford, backing the Ellison Institute of Technology at Oxford to fuse AI, medicine and sustainability in one global hub.

In this episode of Agents of Tech, Autria Godfrey, Stephen Horn and Laila Rizvi sit down in Oxford with Professor Santa Ono, Global President of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), to ask a simple question: Can Oxford really become Europe’s Silicon Valley?

We explore:

- Why Ellison chose Oxford and the UK over Chicago or California

- How EIT plans to recruit 7,000 world class scientists and double Oxford’s research base

- The model of science-led capitalism and why commercialization is central to Ellison’s vision

- The UK’s unique advantage in health data and biobanks (NHS data, UK Biobank, Protein Data Bank)

- How AI, machine learning and robotics will change drug discovery, pandemics and healthcare

- The relationship between EIT and Oracle, and how independent the institute really is

- Parallels and contrasts with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation model of philanthropy

- What this means for the UK’s role between the US and China in the global innovation race

Professor Ono explains why he believes the UK is now one of the best places in the world to build AI-driven science: from single-payer health data to a fast-growing ecosystem of serial entrepreneurs. He also addresses questions about data privacy, ethics, bioterrorism risks and public concerns about American tech money in historic British institutions.

If you care about:

- How AI and health data will reshape medicine

- Whether Oxford and Cambridge can anchor Europe’s answer to Silicon Valley

- What it really takes to build a global science and technology campus at scale

…this conversation is for you.

Tell us in the comments: Do you think Ellison’s Oxford gamble is a bold new model for global science, or another moonshot that will be hard to scale?

CHAPTERS

00:00 Larry Ellison’s $2.5B bet on Oxford
00:35 Agents of Tech intro
01:22 Why Oxford?
02:45 Interview begins: Santa Ono
03:01 Ellison’s vision for EIT
05:11 Scaling talent and entrepreneurship
05:53 Science capitalism vs traditional philanthropy
07:52 Why base EIT in the UK
10:38 NHS data, privacy and AI concerns
12:55 AI’s impact on jobs and drug discovery
15:12 Commercialisation and scientific breakthroughs
17:38 Building a new global research hub
20:26 AI geopolitics and the UK’s role
21:03 EIT as a global model
22:50 Interview ends
23:01 Post-interview reflections
24:41 Closing and invitation to Larry Ellison