Paul Allen constructed an empire over the 35 years after he left Microsoft that consists of funding local museums and arts festivals, sponsoring brain science and artificial intelligence research institutes, and even owning sports teams and an enormous real-estate portfolio. The disposition of possibly the largest estate in the history of the state of Washington poses many questions of the future of these endeavors, and the Internal Revenue Service will be poring through all of it.
There is familial continuity built in to the structure of Allen’s empire even though he was not married and had no children. His sister, Jody, helped carry out many of his endeavors. But there are early signs of how various pieces of the Allen empire have been subtly restructured to operate more independently. And rumors have already started about possible sales of Allen’s sports franchises, the Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers.
