A 120-acre site purchased by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $20 million in 1997 in the Beverly Crest neighborhood of Los Angeles has sold for $65 million, the L.A. Times reported.
The identity of the buyer wasn’t reported. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reached a deal to buy the property for $90 million in February 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, but that deal later fell through.
Architectural Digest reports that Allen had planned a “sprawling estate” on the Los Angeles property, with a mansion, equestrian facilities and a winery, but the plans hadn’t come together at the time of his death.
Allen’s investment company, Vulcan, declined to comment on the sale.
It’s part of the lengthy process of scaling back the late Microsoft co-founder’s many investments and projects following his death in October 2018 at the age of 65, after he was diagnosed with a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Vulcan announced plans to close its arts and production divisions in 2020, leaving the future of the Cinerama movie theater and Living Computers Museum unclear.
His 414-foot superyacht Octopus sold for nearly $300 million.
Recent postings on LinkedIn referenced some employees leaving Vulcan, but responding to an inquiry from GeekWire, the company said in a statement that the departures were related to previously announced moves.
“Vulcan continues to evolve since Paul’s death but there have been no recent layoffs,” the statement said. “Rather, staff reductions on our shared services teams were announced this summer, and most impacted colleagues chose to finish out the year with us. Those reductions were a function of previously announced business changes such as the Products team (EarthRanger, Skylight, Machine Learning, etc.) transitioning to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and the shuttering of Vulcan Productions at the beginning of 2021.”
Previously on GeekWire: Allen Institute for AI takes over Vulcan’s portfolio of environmental big-data projects
