Forbes estimates Simonyi’s fortune at $8 billion. With 360 feet of beachfront and 2.3 acres, the parcels at 1063 and 1071 North Ocean were first purchased by Estée Lauder Board Chair William Lauder in 2020 and 2021; he then demolished the houses that stood on them and re-listed the combined property for $178 million. Simonyi and his wife Lisa, a Swedish-born philanthropist, bought the prime real estate plots in February of this year. And, shortly afterwards, Lauder paid $155 million for a new home previously owned by the late radio personality, Rush Limbaugh.
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Then, in June, Simonyi bought two more lots across the street for a combined $48 million. The first was a Mediterranean mansion owned by lawyer Thomas Harvey and his wife Cathy Black, a longtime publishing executive. The second, owned by a land trust, last fetched $5,254,650 in 2017.
Multiple sources confirmed the sales and added that seeking to be good neighbors, the Simonyis are interviewing local architects for the project.
The Hungarian-born Simonyi, son of a professor of electrical engineering, is a software pioneer who left Hungary at 17 to graduate from Berkeley and Stanford. In the 1970s, he created the first “What You See is What You Get” text editor and graphic user interfaces at the legendary Xerox PARC, source of many early personal computing innovations. He then left to become employee number 40 of Microsoft before leaving in 2002 to create Intentional Software, a developer of productivity software. Simonyi is also a pioneer of space tourism due to his two trips to the International Space Station. Back on earth, he was a long-time boyfriend of lifestyle doyenne, Martha Stewart.
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