Sun Microsystems Co-Founder Vinod Khosla, his wife Neeru, and their son, Neal, are reportedly set to purchase the Seattle Seahawks for $9.6 billion, according to reports.
The price tag will make the sale the biggest in NFL history, though it is still just shy of the $10 billion sale price of the L.A. Lakers, the latter of which remains the highest amount ever paid for a sports team.
The trio has made a big deal about the estate of former Seahawks owner Paul Allen, who passed away in 2018, and left the team to his own family. Allen purchased the team in 1997 from owner Ken Behring, in part to ensure the team remained in Seattle rather than being moved to California, as Behring had threatened to do at the time.
The Seahawks confirmed the pending sale in a statement on social media.
“We are honored to be entrusted as the next stewards of the Seattle Seahawks,” Vinod Khosla said in a statement released on Sunday. “We look forward to building on the winning legacy Paul Allen created and to earning the trust of the Seahawks organization and fans everywhere.”
The Khoslas currently own a minority stake in the San Francisco 49ers and will be required to sell that stake to take control of the Seahawks, per NFL rules, Fox News reported.
Vinod and Neeru have been married since 1980, and their son, Neal, was born in 1993.
Born in Pune, India, the 81-year-old Vinod co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 after he attended IIT Delhi from 1971 to 1976. After he sold his stake in Sun, he founded the venture capital company Khosla Ventures. He is reportedly worth $13.6 billion.
His wife, Neeru, 69, co-chairs the CK12 Foundation, an education nonprofit, and earned a degree in microbiology in the late 1970s. She married Vinod in 1980 at the age of 25, but the couple had known each other since they were teenagers back in India. Neeru is also on the board of several organizations, including Wikimedia, the American India Foundation, and DonorsChoose. She has three other children with Vinod.
Neal, a 33-year-old graduate of Stanford, is the cofounder and CEO of Curai Health, a virtual primary care platform founded in 2017. The company uses artificial intelligence and licensed clinicians to provide chat-based medical consultations, including diagnosis, prescriptions, and referrals. He was recently listed on TIME magazine’s list of the top 100 most important Artificial Intelligence entrepreneurs.
Headed by Jody Allen, the Allen family began putting the Seahawks up for sale in February, just after the team won its second Super Bowl in its history. Their father, Paul, had bought the team for $194 million. He died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma at 65.
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