Paul Allen IQ

Paul Allen was born in Seattle in 1953 and met Bill Gates at Lakeside School, where they shared an early computer terminal. He scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT, studied at Washington State University and dropped out to work as a programmer. In 1975 he and Gates founded Microsoft. He left in 1983 after a cancer diagnosis and became an investor and philanthropist, owning sports teams and funding brain science. He died in 2018.

No IQ test is on record. In his 2011 memoir Idea Man he reported a perfect 1600 on the SAT. The SAT measures learned reasoning and is not an IQ test, but very few students reached 1600 then. LifeScore lists about 160 as a marker with a range of 145 to 170.

Only roughly. SAT and IQ scores correlate, and some societies such as Mensa have accepted old SAT scores. But the scales, norms and content differ, and the SAT was rescaled in 1995, so any conversion is an approximation, especially at the top.

He invested through Vulcan, owned the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, funded SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004, and founded institutes for brain science, artificial intelligence and cell science.

Allen spotted where technology was going and acted early, from the first microcomputers to brain mapping. Gates described him as the one who saw the future first. His style was visionary pattern-spotting more than day-to-day execution.

What supports it

• His memoir reports a perfect SAT and National Merit status.
• He co-wrote Microsoft's first product with Gates.
• His later investments and institutes are well documented.

What it cannot prove

• The SAT is not an IQ test, and conversions at the top of the scale are very uncertain.
• The 1600 is self-reported.
• Business success depends heavily on timing, capital, teams and luck, so it is a weak guide to reasoning ability.

Paul Allen's IQ is represented here by a retrospective estimate of 160, not a verified test result. Paul Allen is best known for exceptional technical vision. The useful question is what the surviving evidence shows, not whether a precise modern score can be recovered.

Shy, curious and visionary. The ideas person of the early Microsoft, who later chased big science and big projects.

The dominant archetype here is The Visionary. This archetype shapes decision patterns: what feels natural, what creates friction, and what blind spots tend to emerge.

Estimated IQ is 160. This is a rough estimate based on documented accomplishments and contemporary accounts, not a literal measurement.

He played guitar in a band and was a devoted fan of Jimi Hendrix, funding a museum in Seattle.

Paul Allen's estimate of 160 falls in the profoundly gifted IQ range. Want your own number rather than Paul's? Take the free IQ test or the quick IQ test. See what an IQ of 160 means, place it on the IQ chart or check how rare it is with the IQ rarity calculator.