Microsoft co-founder and billionaire investor Paul Allen died Monday in Seattle from "complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," his family said in a statement.

Allen revealed earlier this month that he had restarted treatment for the disease, which he was first diagnosed with in the early 1980s.


In 1975 Allen co-founded Microsoft with partner Bill Gates, but resigned from the company in 1983 after he became ill. ...

"Once I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s, my decision became simpler. If I were to relapse, it would be pointless—if not hazardous—to return to the stresses at Microsoft. If I continued to recover, I now understood that life was too short to spend it unhappily."
Paul Allen in Vanity Fair, 2011
  • Allen later parlayed his Microsoft stake into a fortune that put him among the world's wealthiest individuals, reports Forbes.
  • In recent years he turned to other ventures, including ownership of the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trailblazers, as well as a space company, Stratolaunch. Allen was also a philanthropist whose foundation was instrumental in aiding the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

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