The Fabulous Life Of Microsoft's Other Billionaire Cofounder Paul Allen

Allen describes himself on his website PaulAllen.com as a "Philanthropist, investor, entrepreneur, Seahawks and Blazers team owner, guitarist, neuroscience supporter, space pioneer & Microsoft co-founder."

He's all those things and more.

Allen plays guitar, and has his own band, "The Underthinkers," who cut an album in 2013. Allen wrote or cowrote every song on it.

According to gossip in the Seattle music scene, he keeps several musicians on full-time retainer. They must be ready to hop on a plane and fly anywhere in the world to jam with Allen and rock star party guests like Eric Clapton.

The album featured guest performers Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, Chrissie Hynde, Joe Walsh, Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Ivan Neville, and others.

In 2000, Allen opened the Experience Music Project, a rock and roll museum dedicated to his hero Jimi Hendrix and housed in a psychedelic Frank Gehry building that was meant to look like a melted guitar.

EMP has since grown into a full-fledged interactive music museum with exhibits that cover everything from Nirvana to "The Wizard of Oz." Proceeds from his album support the EMP.

A lot of billionaire moguls own a professional sports team, but Allen owns two: the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team, which he bought in 1988, and the Seattle Seahawks football team, which he bought in 1997 after Ken Behring threatened to move the team to California.

He's also part owner of the Seattle Sounders FC, which regularly sells out the 30,000-seat layout of Qwest Field used for soccer games.

As an NBA owner, Allen weighed in on the recent controversy over Donald Sterling.

Allen tweeted:

"I completely support NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s decisive action on the Sterling issue. Great leadership and the league is in good hands."

(Side note: Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer is rumored to be making a bid for the L.A. Clippers, if the NBA prevails and Sterling is forced to sell.)

After the Seahawks blowout win over Denver, players, coaches and select employees celebrated at a post-game party that featured musical performances from Allen and Grammy Award-winning Seattle hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

Allen hit the stage with “the Underthinkers.”

Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was impressed, noting in the morning that “Paul was hot last night, he was tearing it up — big licks.”

He opened The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in 2004 in the same building as the EMP, featuring things like Captain Kirk's chair and Robby the Robot from the 1950s TV series "Forbidden Planet."

A trio of spaces are dedicated to horror-film, fantasy, and sci-fi exhibits, and three of the horror genre's most famous directors — Roger Corman, John Landis and Eli Roth — helped curate the collection.

The exhibit includes a soundproofed photo booth where you can be photographed screaming in a horror movie scene.

Paul Allen collects all kinds of other stuff, too, including vintage airplanes.

Here's a picture from 2008, when he opened his collection of WWII planes to the public.

Last month, a Mark Rothko painting owned by Allen sold for a jaw-dropping $56.2 million at auction, Bloomberg reports. Allen bought the work for $34.2 million in 2007.

He also recently curated from his collection 40 paintings of European and American landscapes covering five centuries of masterpieces for an exhibit that will be shown at the Portland and Seattle Art Museums in the coming years.

Allen owns one of the biggest yachts in the world. It's called the Octopus, and it measures 414 feet and reportedly costs $20 million a year to maintain.

The Octopus has played host to some wild New Years' parties and visits from recording artists like Mick Jagger and Damian Marley.

It has its own submarine.

The submarine can sleep 10 people for up to two weeks.

He's reportedly been trying to sell the Tatoosh for a few years now, and recently pulled it off the market.

Allen first listed it for $160 million back in 2010. It can accommodate 20 guests and 30 crew members. It sports a cinema, swimming pool, basketball court, recording studio, gym, and two helipads.

Paris and Nicky Hilton once used it for a month-long vacation. It was also the largest to travel to Sochi for the Winter Olympics.

Allen cofounded Stratolaunch Systems. That's a startup looking to make spaceflight more affordable by using huge lightweight planes to launch people and cargo off the ground. It then launches rockets into space from 30,000 feet.

Stratolaunch is currently building the world’s largest plane that weighs 1.3 million pounds, a wingspan greater than the length of a football field, and has six 747 engines.

It hopes to launch into space by 2016, Geekwire reports.

Like many other wealthy billionaires, Paul Allen has a quite the real estate portfolio, buying mansions everywhere he needs a landing spot.

For instance, shortly after his investment company, Vulcan Capital, opened a Palo Alto office, Allen bought a gorgeous $27 million, 22,000-square-foot mansion nearby in Silicon Valley's most expensive town of Atherton.

The six-bedroom house also had a separate two-bedroom guest house and a five-car garage with a 'manager's suite."

Last month, Allen sold his $28 million Malibu home on Carbon Beach, also known as Billionaire's Beach.

(Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison owns multiple homes there.)

Allen paid $25 million for the home in 2010, though the rumor was that he didn't like staying at the home because he "hated the sound of the ocean."

In late 2013, Allen also sold his 292-acre private island off the coast of Washington for a mere $8 million.

Allen had reportedly tried to sell the island for years, first listing it in 2005 for $25 million and dropping the price to $13.5 million in 2011.

Allen's home in the Seattle suburb of Mercer Island is a 10,000-square foot compound hidden in the trees with quarters for his mother and a regulation NBA size basketball court.

That octagonal shape on top of the yacht is a helicopter landing pad.

He refurbished The Cinerama, a 70mm movie theater, with state of the art sound and projection systems while preserving its vintage curved screen.

His Vulcan investment firm also helped to redevelop some of the formerly seedier parts of Seattle over the past decade into some of the coolest, most trendy parts of the city.

Allen funds tons of charitable projects, including The Allen Institute for Brain Science, which regularly releases research about the brain for free on the Web site brain-map.org.

Allen also launched a second, somewhat related foundation known as the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, or AI2.

He then lured Oren Etzioni, one of the big names in the Seattle-area tech scene, into running AI2.

Together Allen and Etzioni want to create a computer so smart it can take classes and pass tests designed for humans.

Etzioni says that working for Allen is absolutely fantastic.

In addition to his two institutes, Allen gives millions to other charitable causes. In 2011, he gave away $327.6 million, making him the most generous American of that year.

He gives to worldwide projects like Ocean research and African wildlife preservation, particularly an elephant-saving organization called Elephants Without Borders.

Plus his Paul G Allen Family Foundation gives to regional and local causes affecting the Seattle area with a focus on music, art, youth, and education.

Allen, who turned 61 in January, was diagnosed with a form of lymphatic cancer called Hodgkin's disease, and left Microsoft in 1983 to get treatment. He recovered fully.

Unfortunately, it was revealed in 2009 that he was being treated for a different form of lymphatic cancer, which he also clearly beat.

Five years later and he's still rocking out.

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