Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Just Bought This Gorgeous $27 Million Mansion In Silicon Valley

Paul Allen, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, needed new digs a bit south of his home town of Seattle.

So he just bought a massive 22,000-square-foot custom home in the affluent Silicon Valley town of Atherton, Calif., reports Realtor.com's Neal Leitereg on the Celebrity Real Estate blog. He paid $27 million which was a bit of a deal. The home was listed in late September for $31.8 million, according to Leitereg.

Allen owns properties all over the world. But he may have wanted these digs because his venture investment firm, Vulcan Capital, opened an office in nearby Palo Alto in April, reports the Silicon Valley Business Journal's Nathan Donato-Weinstein.

Atherton is a popular town for tech billionaires of a certain era. Google's Eric Schmidt, HP's Meg Whitman, and Oracle's Mark Hurd have homes there.