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Forbes has published a list of the richest residents of every US state.
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Pierre Omidyar, the elusive founder of eBay, is Hawaii’s richest permanent resident.
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Omidyar has given away $1.5 billion of his wealth since 2014.
America’s elite have long viewed Hawaii as the ideal tropical paradise for their vacation homes.
Billionaires like Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison own property there.
But despite the big names and flashy personalities of Hawaii’s super-rich, Pierre Omidyar, the media-shy founder of eBay, is the island nation’s richest permanent resident, according to Forbes’ 2024 list of the richest billionaires in every state.
The Forbes list included 54 billionaires living in 47 of the 50 U.S. states. Together they are worth $1.6 trillion.
Omidyar contributes $6.5 billion.
The French-born Iranian-American founded eBay in 1995. Omidyar became a billionaire when the company went public three years later.
In 2002, eBay acquired online payment platform PayPal for $1.5 billion, which was later spun off in 2015.
In 2020, Omidyar resigned from eBay’s board as part of a broader restructuring of the company. The departure was not related to disagreements with the company, the Wall Street Journal reported. He retains the title of Director Emeritus.
In 2013, Omidyar founded First Look Media, a nonprofit media organization, which founded the investigative news portal The Intercept in 2014. In 2023, The Intercept left First Look to become an independent organization.
Although he lives in Honolulu with his wife Pamela, Omidyar is also a real estate developer in Mexico.
According to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, the 56-year-old is the 444th richest person in the world. In 2004, he founded the Omidyar Network and has since donated over $1.5 billion to charitable causes and impact investing.
He is a long-time supporter of progressive political causes and a critic of Big Tech. In 2020, his Omidyar group donated $150,000 to Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit organization that represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Omidyar has taken over the top spot in Hawaii on the Forbes list from Larry Ellison, chief technology officer and co-founder of Oracle.
Although Ellison still owns 98% of Lanai, an island in Hawaii, records now indicate that California is his primary residence, Forbes reported.
Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who also own large properties in Hawaii, are also residents of different states.
In 2021, Bezos and his now-fiancée Lauren Sanchez broke records by purchasing the most expensive property ever sold on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Architectural Digest reportedwhen the couple paid $78 million for a 14-acre property.
Correction: May 2, 2024 – An earlier version of this story misstated the roles of Larry Ellison and Pierre Omidyar at Oracle and eBay, respectively. Ellison is the chief technology officer, not the CEO, and Omidyar is the former chairman.
Read the original article on Business Insider