Tech billionaire donates $150M to Hawaii hospitals after massive real estate purchases raise alarms
Salesforce’s billionaire CEO Marc Benioff announced that he is gifting $150 million to Hawaiian hospitals — one week after locals raised alarms over reports that he has quietly has amassed roughly 600 acres of green landscapes in Waimea, Hawaii.
Of the nine-figure donation, $50 million will be sent to the Hilo Medical Center, while the remaining $100 million will go to nonprofit healthcare organization Hawaii Pacific Health, “to help create a healthcare campus of the future” at Honolulu-based Straub Medical Center, according to a joint press release issued Tuesday.
“We feel fortunate to have been part of the Hawaii community for many decades and to be able to support our ohana in this way,” Benioff and his wife, Lynne, said (“ohana” is a term used by native Hawaiians that means “family”).
The Benioffs added in the press release earlier reported by Gizmodo: “Nothing is more important than the health of our community and access to care for all who need it,”
Nevertheless, as news of the 59-year-old tech mogul’s growing footprint in Hawaii made headlines, locals worry that his string of 38 land purchases could drive housing costs higher and dissolve the community’s culture.
The Tuesday statement noted that the funds will “deepen connections between both Hawaii hospitals and UCSF Health in San Francisco,” the home-base of Salesforce, one of the world’s largest software companies that owns popular business-messaging app Slack.
Although the press release claims that Benioff’s donation was “developed over more than a year of collaboration,” its timing raised questions.
NPR revealed last week that Benioff, since the year 2000, has bought more than three dozen parcels of land in Waimea — cowboy country with a population of less than 10,000 — through a nonprofit and at least six anonymous limited liability companies, or LLC, all with the same San Francisco Bay area address.
Some 165 acres of his land are reserved for Benioff and his family, NPR reported, while the remaining plots are being turned into a community center and an affordable housing complex, among other philanthropic efforts, per NPR.
Though Benioff was reportedly adamant to NPR journalist Dara Kerr that “there’s nothing owned by Salesforce in Hawaii [and] there never will be,” she recalled Benioff being “reluctant” to speak on the properties he purchased using the anonymous LLCs.
“He starts speaking more quickly and fidgets with a piece of paper in his hand,” Kerr wrote of when she asked about his land purchases.
A spokespersdon for the Benioffs told The Post that “Marc and Lynne have donated almost 75% of the total land they’ve purchased in Hawaii over the last quarter century, and well over 90% of the land they’ve purchased since 2020.”
“This includes 282 acres donated to the Hawaii Island Community Development Corporation (HICDC), a non-profit developer of affordable housing, and 158 acres to a separate non-profit that holds the property for HICDC if it chooses to use it, or for other philanthropic uses if it does not.”
San Francisco is also Benioff’s primary residence, where he owns a multimillion-dollar mansion in the city’s upscale Sea Cliff neighborhood. Though details of Benioff’s home are unclear, a neighboring waterfront abode in Sea Cliff recently sold for $25 million, according to Forbes.
