Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the close friend of Steve Jobs who Jobs’ kids called “our rich friend,” has joined Tesla as a member of its board.
Ellison was the first person Jobs sought to join Apple’s board of directors after Jobs resumed control of Apple in the 1990s. He stayed until the early 2000s. Interestingly, in recent years Tesla and Apple have been considered rivals more often due to both of their work in building tech-heavy car projects.
Larry Ellison was notorious for not turning up at Apple board meetings. He did warn Jobs about this early on, saying he didn’t plan to be at every meeting. In his place, Jobs had a cardboard standee made out of Ellison’s portrait from one of his BusinessWeek covers.
Ellison is joining Tesla’s board alongside Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, an executive with Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Ellison has a large personal stake in Tesla and describes himself as “very close friends to Elon Musk.” However, he is joining Tesla’s board as part of an agreement with the SEC, after Musk was forced to agree to new board members after sending out an August tweet saying he had “secured funding” for taking the company private.
Over the years, plenty of people have compared Musk and Apple founder Steve Jobs, although Musk has suggested that Jobs was actually quite rude to him on one of the only occasions they met. In recent years, Apple and Tesla have swapped employees related to automotive technologies. Musk recently criticized Apple by saying that it “doesn’t blow people’s minds” anymore.
Source: CBS News
