Paul Allen

His father was a librarian and his mother taught fourth grade, and the private school they sent him to in 1965 had a Teletype in it. At Lakeside he found Bill Gates. The two of them earned machine time by hunting bugs in Computer Center Corporation's software, went through dumpsters for program listings, and got themselves banned from the University of Washington computer lab in 1971 for abusing their privileges. They built traffic counters on Intel's 8008 chip under the name Traf-O-Data. Allen scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT, went to Washington State, dropped out after two years, and took a programming job at Honeywell in Boston, a short drive from where Gates was enrolled at Harvard.

He named the company. Micro-Soft, from microcomputer and software, formed with Gates in Albuquerque in 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter, and it was Allen who pushed the 1980 purchase of a rough operating system from Seattle Computer Products that became the one IBM shipped. He left day-to-day work in 1983 and spent the next 35 years spending. Vulcan Inc. from 1986. A controlling stake in Charter Communications that cost him something like seven billion dollars when it went bankrupt. Sole funding for SpaceShipOne, which reached 367,442 feet in October 2004 and took the Ansari X Prize. The Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003, then institutes for artificial intelligence and for cell science. The Trail Blazers in 1988, and the Seahawks in 1997, bought to stop them leaving Seattle. Over two billion dollars given away in his lifetime.

The split was 60-40 in Gates's favor, on the argument that Gates had done almost all the work on BASIC, and Gates later moved it to 64-36. Allen agreed both times. In 1982 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and treated with months of radiation, and in early 1983 he stopped coming to work. Gates offered to buy him out at five dollars a share. Allen refused, kept 25.2 percent of the company, and was a billionaire when it went public. In his 2011 memoir he wrote that Gates had tried to dilute his stake while he was ill. They repaired it — the two had already given their old school 2.2 million dollars together in 1986, and they stayed friends until Allen died. He never married and had no children, and said he had wanted a family.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma came back in 2018 and killed him by septic shock on October 15, at 65. Seattle lit the Space Needle blue. His sister Jody became executor of an estate that was to be sold off and given away. The art went first: Christie's auctioned his collection in November 2022 for more than 1.5 billion dollars, the largest such sale ever held. The NBA approved the sale of the Trail Blazers in March 2026, at a reported 4.25 billion. The Seahawks went on the market in February 2026, days after winning Super Bowl LX, and in July the estate agreed to sell to a group led by Vinod Khosla, subject to league approval. The money goes to nonprofits.

Paul Allen's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Traf-O-Data company
  Traffic counters built on the Intel 8008, with Bill Gates 1972
• Microsoft company
  He supplied the name and the first product, a BASIC interpreter 1975
• Vulcan Inc. company
  The vehicle for everything he did after Microsoft, run with his sister 1986
• Allen Institute for Brain Science company
  Started with 100 million dollars and eventually given about 500 million 2003
• SpaceShipOne invention
  He was the sole investor. It won the Ansari X Prize in October 2004. 2004
• Idea Man book
  The memoir in which he set out his side of the Microsoft equity 2011

• 1965 aged ~12 Enters Lakeside School and meets Bill Gates
• 1971 aged ~18 Banned from the University of Washington computer lab for abusing privileges
• 1975 aged ~22 Forms Micro-Soft with Gates in Albuquerque Their first employee was a high school friend, Ric Weiland.
• June 25, 1981 aged 28 Microsoft incorporates, with Allen as executive vice president
• 1982 aged ~29 Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma He left day-to-day work early the next year and refused a buyout at five dollars a share.
• 1997 aged ~44 Buys the Seattle Seahawks for 200 million dollars The purchase stopped the franchise moving to California.
• October 4, 2004 aged 51 SpaceShipOne reaches 367,442 feet and wins the Ansari X Prize Allen had funded it alone.
• October 15, 2018 aged 65 Dies of septic shock at 65 Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, first treated in 2009, had returned that year.
• November 2022 aged 69 Christie's sells his art collection for more than 1.5 billion dollars The largest art auction ever held, with proceeds directed to philanthropy.

• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. co-founded Microsoft with
• Steve Ballmer b. 1956
  Former CEO of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, with vast technology-derived wealth. Microsoft successor
• Jeff Bezos b. 1964
  Founder of Amazon who transformed e-commerce and cloud computing, becoming one of the wealthiest people in history. sold him South Lake Union
• Elon Musk b. 1971
  Engineer and entrepreneur whose companies have advanced electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and neural interfaces. rival in private spaceflight
• Jimi Hendrix 1942–1970
  Guitarist whose sound, technique, and performance style revolutionized rock music. built a museum around
• Frank Gehry 1929–2025
  Developed a sculptural architectural language seen in the Walt Disney Concert Hall and other landmarks. commissioned