Some billionaires have already tied their lives to their communities. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who first visited Hawaii in 1974 and has donated $100 million to various charities in the state over the past two decades, and his wife, Lynne, have donated 280 acres of their land to build affordable housing.
“I have a strong spiritual connection to Hawaii,” says Benioff, who has tried to incorporate the Hawaiian concept of ohana (“family”) into Salesforce’s corporate culture. “I have a deep understanding of the people and the spirit of the islands, which we call aloha.”
Others, like Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is rumored to be building a bunker on his gated estate, seem more concerned about privacy. Real estate broker Rob Kildow, who claims to bike with billionaire Ken Griffin (of the Citadel hedge fund), recalls one billionaire who lives at Hualalai Resort saying, “Half the people here don’t know who I am, and the other half don’t care.”