Paul Allen's 1997 purchase of the Seahawks from then-owner Ken Behring is one of the biggest moments in Seahawks history. This move kept professional football in Seattle after Behring threatened to move the team to Southern California.

Even more significant than his role as a sports owner, Allen is one of the greatest philanthropists alive today.

In October of 2015, Allen was one of eight recipients of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for dedicating his private wealth to the public good. To date, Allen has given more than $2 billion in order to save endangered species, improve ocean health, fight contagious diseases, research the human brain, and to build sustainable communities.

Allen committed $100 million to fight the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The Paul G. Allen Ebola Program quickly worked to provide supplies and support to health care workers, in order to both limit the spread of the outbreak and to care for those who had become ill.

As the outbreak continued to grow, Allen's Ebola Program partnered with the U.S. Department of State to build two additional medevac units and created a fund to pick up any cost of evacuation not funded by a medical worker's insurance. This was done to encourage American medical workers to serve in the affected areas, without concern that they would not be able to be evacuated if they fell ill.

In October of 2015, the Program committed another $11 million in grants to fund research into Ebola, hoping to ensure that an outbreak of this scale is never repeated.
Allen has also donated $26 million to Washington State University to build the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, $300 million to expand the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and $100 million to create the Allen Institute for Cell Science.

In August of 2015, a research team led by Allen was able to recover the bell of the HMS Hood. Once the bell is restored, it will serve as a memorial for the 1,415 lives lost when the HMS Hood was sunk by the Bismarck in the North Atlantic in 1941.