Do we like them?

Do we like Paul Allen?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A big record of giving to science and the planet and nothing harmful found, but the digging was shallow, so we hold back from the top marks.

Paul Allen is the quieter half of the Microsoft founding story: the partner of Bill Gates who helped start the company, then went on to own sports teams, cable TV and real estate. He died in October 2018, so nothing new is coming from him, and the latest items are about his estate rather than the man.

The one proper stoush on the record is with Gates himself. In his 2011 memoir Idea Man, Allen claimed Gates tried to buy his shares at a bargain price before he left Microsoft in 1983. Gates answered that his recollection of many events may differ, but that he valued Allen's friendship and the book was not a legal filing.

On the harm test, the searches we managed to run turned up no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, no conspiracy grievance and no culture-war grifting from him. That is an absence in a limited search, not a deep clean bill of health, and we could not open full articles this time. Say it plainly: thin record, nothing nasty found.

The good stuff is the real stuff. He founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 with a US$100 million commitment, later pledged another US$300 million, and set up institutes for cell science and artificial intelligence. His Giving Pledge letter named climate change and ocean health among his causes, though we only saw that in a search summary.

The giving has outlived him. His estate has backed a fund that launched in 2025 with a first known grant to the University of Washington for climate solutions, prediction and environmental monitoring, though reports differ on the fund's size. Nothing recent about him personally turned up.