Which brings us to the second epochal change identified by Blair: technology, and specifically AI. “Twenty years ago it was globalisation, now it’s AI,” laments one former close colleague, noting Blair’s tendency to warn of immutable forces that cannot be challenged but which, like the weather, must simply be accepted.
Except in this case it’s hard to read Blair’s prognostications as the fruit only of dispassionate analysis. On this subject, he is not neutral. The Tony Blair Institute, or TBI, took $130m between 2021 and 2023, with pledges of a further $218m to follow, from Larry Ellison, whose Oracle company is hugely invested in AI infrastructure. According to one detailed account based on extensive testimony from current and former TBI staff, the TBI and Oracle have become “inseparable”, with the former acting as a “sales engine” for the latter. In this telling, Blair’s “trademark evangelism is now focused on AI, its power to transform government … and why everyone should listen to Larry Ellison”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/29/tony-blair-says-he-is-all-about-the-future-but-his-vision-is-woefully-stuck-in-the-pastThat report:
Blair and the Billionaire
Insiders reveal how Larry Ellison’s money turned Blair’s institute into a tech sales and lobbying operation for Oracle
The ex-premier’s trademark evangelism is now focused on AI, its power to transform government –with his Institute now going as far as to try to build its own AI tools to sell to Gulf states– and why everyone should listen to Larry Ellison, the founder of technology firm Oracle.
While the institute relies on Blair’s political brand, its money comes, in large part, from Ellison, who has had a remarkable 2025. He was briefly the richest man in the world in September, as Oracle’s stake in AI infrastructure drove its share price into orbit. In the 1990s Ellison was known as “the man who would be Gates” as he battled the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, for pre-eminence. This year, the 81 year old has been feted by US President Donald Trump as the “CEO of everything” and an essay in the New York Times called him the billionaire “who will soon own the news” as his family’s media interests in Paramount-Sky Dance seem set to expand to include Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ellison invested $130 million in the TBI between 2021 and 2023, with a further $218 million pledged since then. The scale of funding took the TBI from a headcount of 200 to approaching 1,000. Blair himself takes no salary from TBI but over this time the institute has been able to recruit from bluechip firms like McKinsey and Silicon Valley giants Meta. In 2018 before the Oracle founder’s funding surge, TBI’s best-paid director earned $400,000. In 2023, the last year where accounts are available, the top earner took home $1.26 million.
Blair and Ellison have a relationship that goes back to the former’s time in office. In 2003 Ellison and Blair, then in his pomp, had a photo opportunity at Downing Street to mark a gift of supplies to 40 specialist schools. In tech circles this is known as “land and expand”. Oracle has since been contracted hundreds of times by the British government and earned £1.1 billion in public sector revenue since the start of 2022, according to data collected by procurement analysts Tussell.
https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/blair-and-the-billionaire/
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