David quit his writing job at SNL in the first season, only to show up to work two days later acting as though nothing had happened. That event inspired a second-season episode of Seinfeld entitled “The Revenge”. David met his future Seinfeld stars during that early stage of his career: he worked with Michael Richards (Kramer) on Fridays and with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) on SNL. He can be heard heckling Michael McKean when McKean hosted SNL in 1984, and he can be seen in the sketch “The Run, Throw, and Catch Like a Girl Olympics” when Howard Cosell hosted the season finale in 1985.

In 1989 David teamed up with comedian Jerry Seinfeld to create a pilot for NBC called The Seinfeld Chronicles, which became the basis for Seinfeld, one of the most successful shows in history, reaching the top of TV Guide’s list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. Entertainment Weekly ranked it the third-best TV show of all time. David made occasional uncredited appearances on the show, playing such roles as Frank Costanza’s cape-wearing lawyer and the voice of George Steinbrenner. He was also the primary inspiration for the show’s character George Costanza. David left Seinfeld on friendly terms after the seventh season but returned to write the series finale in 1998, two years later. He also continued to provide the voice for the Steinbrenner character.

David wrote 62 of the episodes of Seinfeld, including 1992’s “The Contest”, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award and which TV Guide ranked as episode No. 1 on its list of “TV’s Top 100 Episodes of All Time”. Syndication of Seinfeld earned David an estimated $250 million in 1998 alone. This amount has been steadily decreasing each year, but payments will continue until the full $1.7 billion from the original syndication deal has been paid. In 2008, David made $55 million from Seinfeld syndication, DVD sales, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He was nominated for an Emmy award 19 times for Seinfeld, winning twice – once for best comedy and once for writing.

The HBO cable television channel aired David’s one-hour special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, on October 17, 1999. This was followed by Curb Your Enthusiasm, a television series on HBO that aired its first episode on October 15, 2000. The show revisits many of the themes of Seinfeld, and is improvised from a story outline only several pages long that David writes (as of the 5th season, additional writers were hired).

David was married for 14 years to Laurie Lennard from March 31, 1993 to July 13, 2007. They have two daughters, whom they co-parent. Laurie and Larry became contributing bloggers at The Huffington Post in May 2005. On October 7, 2020, David married Ashley Underwood, whom he met at Sacha Baron Cohen’s birthday party in 2017.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, David supported Barack Obama. In December 2010 David penned an op-ed piece for The New York Times, a sardonic critique of the extension of Bush-era tax cuts headlined “Thanks for the Tax Cut!”

David appeared as a panelist on the NBC series The Marriage Ref and also played Sister Mary-Mengele in the 2012 reboot of The Three Stooges. David co-wrote and starred in the 2013 HBO television film Clear History.

It is estimated that his net worth is somewhere between US$400 to $900 million as of 2015. The National Review estimated his net worth to be as high as $950 million as of 2020. However, Charlie Rose noted David’s overall wealth as closer to $500 million on a televised statement on 60 Minutes in 2013. In a 2015 interview with CBS, David confirmed that half of his wealth was eroded by his 2007 divorce in the community property state of California. “I have a lot of money” David stated in the interview, however, the “figures out there are crazy.” Most of his wealth originates from syndication deals of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm; the former netting $3.1 billion in total re-run fees as of 2013. In 2008, David was reported to gross $55 million in total compensation, mostly from Seinfeld syndication and work on Curb Your Enthusiasm. His speculative net worth was parodied on “The Shrimp Incident” (S2E4) episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm when HBO executive Allan Wasserman yells at David, “If you want shrimp, take your $475 million, go buy a fucking shrimp boat.”

Since 2015, David made multiple guest appearances portraying 2016 and 2020 United States presidential election candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night Live; he also hosted the show on February 6, 2016, with musical guest The 1975 and a cameo from Sanders himself, and on November 4, 2017, with musical guest Miley Cyrus.

On Wednesday, June 2, 2010, the series premiered on the TV Guide Network, making its network television debut. TV Guide Network also produced a series of related discussions with high-profile guest stars, media pundits, and prominent social figures called “Curb: The Discussion” debating the moral implications depicted in each episode. David is quoted as saying “Finally, thanks to the TV Guide Network, I’ll get a chance to watch actual, intelligent people discuss and debate the issues addressed on ‘Curb’. Now if only someone could tell me where this alleged ‘Network’ is, I might even watch it.” The show’s 10th season premiered in 2020.

On January 8, 2020, David joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, “I would say, I would beg him (Bernie) to drop out so I don’t have to keep flying in from Los Angeles to do SNL,” David answered. “I thought when he had the heart attack that would be it, I wouldn’t have to fly in from Los Angeles. But, you know, he’s indestructible. Nothing stops this man!” He later added, “If he wins, do you know what that’s going to do to my life? Do you have any idea? I mean, it will be great for the country—great for the country. Terrible for me.”