Allen gave more than $2 billion towards the advancement of science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts, and community services in his lifetime. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which he founded with his sister Jody, was established to administer a portion of Allen's philanthropic contributions. As of 2015, the foundation had given more than $494 million to over 1,500 nonprofits. in 2010, Allen became a signatory of
The Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half of his fortune to philanthropic causes. Allen received commendations for his philanthropy, including the
Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and
Inside Philanthropy's "Philanthropist of the Year". The institute's projects include the
Allen Mouse Brain Atlas,
Allen Human Brain Atlas and the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas. It helped to advance and shape the
White House's
BRAIN Initiative and the
Human Brain Project. Founded in 2014, the
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)'s main focus is to research and engineer
artificial intelligence. The institute is modeled after the
Allen Institute for Brain Science and led by researcher and professor
Oren Etzioni. As of 2015, AI2 had undertaken four main projects,
Semantic Scholar, Euclid, Plato, and Aristo—the latter of which aims to build an AI system that can pass an 8th-grade science exam. In December 2014, Allen committed $100 million to create the
Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle. As of 2014, the institute was investigating and creating a virtual model of cells in the hope of finding treatments for diseases. Like Allen's other institutes, all data generated and tools developed will be made publicly available online. Launched in 2016 with a $100 million commitment, The
Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group aims to discover and support ideas at the frontier of bioscience in an effort to accelerate the pace of discovery. The group seeks to support scientists and research areas that "some might consider out-of-the-box at the very edges of knowledge". Allen launched the Allen Distinguished Investigators Awards (ADI) in 2010 to support early-stage research projects that often have difficulty securing funding from traditional sources. Allen donated the seed money to build
SETI's
Allen Telescope Array, eventually contributing $30 million to the project. The
Paul Allen's flower fly was named in recognition of his contributions to
dipterology. In 2022, the Paul Allen estate created the Fund for Science and Technology (FFST) and launched in August 2025 with an initial endowment of $3.1 billion and a plan to deploy at least $500 million across bioscience, the environment and AI. The foundation is led by Lynda Stuart and chaired by
Jody Allen.
Environment and conservation Allen provided more than $7 million to fund a census of elephant populations in Africa, the largest such endeavor since the 1970s. The
Great Elephant Census team flew over 20 countries to survey
African savannah elephants. The survey results, published in 2015, showed rapid and accelerated decline. He began supporting the
University of British Columbia's
Sea Around Us Project in 2014 to improve data on global fisheries as a way to fight
illegal fishing. Part of his $2.6 million in funding went towards the creation of
FishBase, an online database about adult finfish. Allen funded the Global FinPrint initiative, launched in July 2015, a three-year survey of sharks and rays in coral reef areas. The survey is the largest of its kind and designed to provide data to help conservation programs. Allen backed
Washington state initiative 1401 to prohibit the purchase, sale and distribution of products made from 10 endangered species including elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, marine turtles, pangolins, sharks and rays. The initiative gained enough signatures to be on the state's ballot on November 3, 2015, and passed. Alongside the
United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), Allen and Vulcan Inc. launched the Smart City Challenge, a contest inviting American cities to transform their transportation systems. Created in 2015 with the USDOT's $40 million commitment as well as $10 million from Allen's Vulcan Inc., the challenge aims to create a first-of-its-kind modern city that will demonstrate how cities can improve quality of life while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The winning city was
Columbus, Ohio. As a member of the
International SeaKeepers Society, Allen hosted its proprietary SeaKeeper 1000TM oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system on all three of his megayachts. Allen funded the building of
microgrids, which are small-scale power grids that can operate independently, in Kenya, to help promote reusable energy and empower its businesses and residents. He was an early investor in the Mawingu Networks, a wireless and solar-powered Internet provider which aims to connect rural Africa with the world, and Off Grid Electric, a company focused on providing solar energy to people in emerging nations.
Ebola In 2014, Allen pledged at least $100 million toward the fight to end the
Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, making him the largest private donor in the Ebola crisis. He also created a website called TackleEbola.org as a way to spread awareness and serve as a vehicle for donors to fund projects in need. The site highlighted organizations working to stop Ebola that Allen supported, such as
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,
Médecins Sans Frontières,
Partners in Health,
UNICEF and
World Food Program USA. On April 21, 2015, Allen brought together key leaders in the Ebola fight at the Ebola Innovation Summit in San Francisco. The summit aimed to share key learnings and reinforce the need for continued action and support to reduce the number of Ebola cases to zero, which was achieved in January 2016. In October 2015, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation announced it would award seven new grants totaling $11 million to prevent future widespread outbreaks of the virus.
Exploration in 2018 In 2012, along with his research team and the
Royal Navy, Allen attempted to retrieve the
ship's bell from , which sank in the
Denmark Strait during World War II, but the attempt failed due to poor weather. On August 7, 2015, they tried again and recovered the bell in very good condition. It was restored and put on display in May 2016 in the
National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, in remembrance of the 1,415 crewmen lost. Allen funded the research ship in 2015 and bought it the following year. The project team aboard
Petrel found the wreck of the in 2015. In 2017, at Allen's direction,
Petrel found the wrecks of and and multiple wrecks from the
Battle of Surigao Strait and the
Battle of Ormoc Bay. In 2018,
Petrel found a lost US Navy
C-2A Greyhound aircraft in the Philippine Sea, in the Coral Sea, and the off the coast of the
Solomon Islands.
Museums and community institutions Allen established non-profit community institutions to display his collections of historic artifacts. These include: •
Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP, is a nonprofit museum, dedicated to contemporary popular culture inside a
Frank Gehry–designed building at
Seattle Center, established in 2000. •
Flying Heritage Collection, which showcases restored vintage military aircraft and armaments primarily from the
World War II era, established in 2004. • STARTUP Gallery, a permanent exhibit at the
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in
Albuquerque dedicated to the history of the
microcomputer, established in 2007. •
Living Computer: Museum + Labs, a collection of
vintage computers in working order and available for interactive sessions on-site or through networked access, opened to the public in 2012.
Art An active art collector, Allen gave more than $100 million to support the arts. On October 15, 2012, the Americans for the Arts gave him the
Eli and Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. Allen loaned out more than 300 pieces from his private art collection to 47 venues. The original 541-page typescript of
Bram Stoker's novel
Dracula was in his collection at one point. In 2013, Allen sold
Barnett Newman's
Onement VI (1953) at
Sotheby's in New York for $43.8 million, then the record for a work by the abstract artist. In 2015, Allen founded the Seattle Art Fair, a four-day event with 60-plus galleries from around the world including the participation of the
Gagosian Gallery,
David Zwirner. The event drew thousands and inspired other satellite fairs throughout the city. In August 2016, Allen announced the launch of Upstream Music Fest + Summit, an annual festival fashioned after
South by Southwest. Held in
Pioneer Square, the first festival took place in May 2017. It was cancelled in 2019 following Allen's death in 2018. In November 2022, Allen's art collection was auctioned at
Christie's New York. It was the biggest sale in art auction history, surpassing $1.5 billion in sales. Six works sold for more than $100 million:
Seurat's
Les Poseuses Ensemble (Petite version), ($149 million, with fees);
Paul Cézanne's 1888-90
La Montagne Sainte-Victoire ($138 million);
van Gogh's Verger avec cyprès ($117 million); and
Gustav Klimt's 1903
Birch Forest ($105 million). The auction also included paintings by
Botticelli,
David Hockney,
Roy Lichtenstein,
Edward Hopper,
Andy Warhol,
Jasper Johns and
Jan Brueghel the Younger. Proceeds from the auction benefitted undisclosed philanthropies.
Education co-founder
Steve Wozniak at the
Living Computer Museum in 2017 In 1989, Allen donated $2 million to the
University of Washington to construct the Allen Library, which was named after his father Kenneth S. Allen, a former associate director of the University of Washington library system. In the same year, Allen donated an additional $8 million to establish the Kenneth S. Allen Library Endowment. In 2012, the endowment was renamed the Kenneth S. and Faye G. Allen Library Endowment after Allen's mother (a noted bibliophile) died. In 2002, Allen donated $14 million to the University of Washington to construct the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. The building was dedicated in October 2003. In 2010, Allen announced a gift of $26 million to build the Paul G. Allen School of Global Animal Health at
Washington State University, his alma mater. The gift was the largest private donation in the university's history. In 2016, Allen pledged a $10 million donation over four years for the creation of the Allen Discovery Centers at
Tufts University and
Stanford University. The centers would fund research that would read and write the morphogenetic code. Over eight years the donation could be as much as $20 million. In 2017, Allen donated $40 million (with an additional $10 million from Microsoft) to reorganize the University of Washington's Computer Science and Engineering department into the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. ==Personal life==