Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen has died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
His family said he lost his battle to cancer on Monday at the age of 65.
Allen, who was born in Seattle, persuaded friend Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard to start Microsoft in 1975.
He left the firm in 1983 before it became the world’s biggest software company following a dispute with Gates but his share of the partnership gave him billions of dollars to play with for the rest of his life.
Before leaving the company, Allen had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, another type of cancer, in the early 1980s.
He revealed in early October he was being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he also received treatment for in 2009.
Following his departure from Microsoft, he spent more than US$1bn to help fund philanthropic projects in the Pacific Northwest region, build the headquarters for his Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and develop the city’s South Lake Union tech hub.
Gates, who met Allen in a computer room at the exclusive Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968, said: “I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends.”
Current Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella on Monday described Allen as a “quiet and persistent” man who changed the world.