Billionaire Marc Benioff is buying up land in Hawaii. And no one knows why : NPR

WAIMEA, Hawaii — A life-size bronze statue of a cowboy sits on the middle of Waimea. The cowboy is driving a horse, lasso in hand, pursuing a wild bull. It is a monument to Ikua Purdy, a hometown hero, who was the primary Hawaiian to grow to be a hall-of-fame rodeo roper. This statue is supposed to characterize the spirit of the place right here on Hawaii’s Large Island, which is wholly totally different from the tourist-laden seashores of Waikiki.

Waimea is primarily an agricultural city with simply three stoplights and round 10,000 residents. It has lush forests full of guava timber and torch ginger, and it is identified for being the birthplace of the Hawaiian cowboy, or paniolo. It sits 1000’s of ft above sea degree, the place misty winds typically blow sideways and, on clear days, give option to expansive views of the island’s three towering volcanoes.

During the last couple of years, a thriller has been brewing on this small mountain city. Somebody has been quietly shopping for tons of of acres of land — stirring worries about rising housing costs and hypothesis amongst locals about what precisely is occurring.

Waimea is a tightknit group that has a big Native Hawaiian inhabitants, and the folks right here say they do not need to lose that tradition.

I first heard rumors concerning the land buys once I was visiting my household close to there in November. My grandmother grew up in Hawaii, and I lived right here as a baby. I began asking round Waimea, and everybody appeared to know who was behind the purchases: billionaire Marc Benioff.

He is the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Salesforce, one of many world’s largest software program firms, which owns the favored messaging service Slack and is price almost $300 billion. He additionally owns Time journal. Benioff is difficult to overlook — the 59-year-old stands at a towering 6 ft, 5 inches and is commonly seen driving round Waimea in his white Hummer pickup, sporting his signature look of a baseball cap together with his curly brown hair tumbling out again.

Benioff lives in a beachside mansion down the mountain from Waimea. He constructed the $24.5 million, 9,800-square-foot house about 20 years in the past and in addition purchased dozens of acres of ranch land in Waimea round that point, in line with public information. Because the onset of the pandemic in 2020, nonetheless, I discovered that Benioff has gone on a a lot bigger — and beforehand unreported — purchasing spree.

Hawaii has lengthy been a spot the place the world’s elite has flocked. And tech billionaires are actually among the many newest cadre of migrants to buy land within the islands. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns a sprawling seashore mansion in Maui. Fb co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has plans to construct a bunker on his land in Kauai, according to Wired. Benioff’s former boss, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, owns 98% of Lanai. And the checklist goes on.

The billionaires stand in stark distinction to the remainder of Hawaii’s residents — the place on the Large Island particularly, median family revenue is round $74,000, in line with county knowledge.

What’s totally different right here is that slightly than specializing in coastal mansions in gated communities, Benioff is shopping for property in a rural residential city. Within the majority of situations, he is paid greater than present market worth, in line with public information. For instance, the longtime Mamane Bakery — identified for its lilikoi cheesecake and mango-guava sizzling cross buns — shuttered after he bought the land for greater than 50% above the present market worth.

I spoke with a number of longtime residents who say they worry that these land buys will add to already sky-high housing prices and that they will be priced out of Waimea. Some folks say just a few of his neighbors had been approached about their properties, and Benioff himself says owners have come to him about promoting.

Whereas the folks of Waimea perceive that Benioff is behind the current land purchases, hardly anybody appears to know his plans. Some guess he is constructing a Salesforce coaching middle and transferring in engineers; others say he is generously donating to the group and serving to native faculties. Most individuals simply shake their heads.

“That is sort of how the rumor mill begins, proper?” says native resident Mike Donoho, who works in pure useful resource planning on the islands. “When there’s not readability or disclosure about what the intentions are of somebody buying a property or a number of properties, then there’s that degree of uncertainty. And with these gaps of knowledge, individuals are filling within the blanks.”

Almost all of the 18 residents who spoke to me did so on the situation that I not use their names. They do not need to be seen as speaking critically about Benioff; they are saying he holds a number of sway right here. One particular person instructed me that, on this small city, it stems from a tradition of not criticizing folks in public, or what locals name “no discuss stink.”

Most of them have comparable sentiments about a single particular person shopping for a number of land in Waimea. As one particular person put it, “When you might have the locals getting priced out of cities like this and extra challenges with folks transferring over right here, it simply creates extra competitors by way of attempting to purchase land. … At what level does Hawaii not grow to be Hawaii anymore, if no Hawaiians are right here?”

As for Benioff, he has stayed silent on the subject. Till now.

“Everybody’s seen the film South Pacific. It is Bali Ha’i,” he tells me in a sit-down interview. “It is a place that everyone likes to be. It is a magical place. It is a spot that individuals come and remodel and alter, evolve. They expertise God. They expertise nature. They expertise themselves.”

ʻOhana, dolphins and Salesforce will get the aloha spirit

Individuals in Waimea inform me about Benioff’s land purchases, however I need to verify them. Earlier than talking with him, I begin combing via Waimea property maps and cross-checking the information with public information from Hawaii’s secretary of state.

I discover that since 2000, Benioff has purchased at the very least 38 parcels of land via at the very least six nameless restricted legal responsibility firms, or LLCs, and one nonprofit. All the property owned by the LLCs has the identical mailing deal with — a P.O. field within the San Francisco Bay Space — and the identical registered agent in Palo Alto, California. Not one of the documentation has Benioff’s title, however he would not dispute any of it.

The property totals greater than 600 acres of land. He is purchased 29 parcels, greater than 580 acres, in Waimea, and 9 others, about 25 acres, at seashore resorts. One in every of his coastal properties surrounds a complete public seashore. The mixed market worth of this land stands at almost $100 million.

Throughout the first 15 years that Benioff purchased land in Hawaii, he principally targeted on seashore resort property. When the pandemic began, he ramped up shopping for residential, industrial and agricultural land in and round Waimea. Since 2020, he has bought 22 parcels of land right here — a city the place stock is low.

Benioff has lengthy professed his love for Hawaii, which he began visiting when he was younger. Salesforce’s origin story even begins with him swimming with dolphins off the Large Island within the late Nineteen Nineties and having a imaginative and prescient of promoting software program as a subscription service over the web.

“I got here to Hawaii for the primary time and fell in love,” Benioff says. “I fell in love with the folks, or what we name right here in Hawaii ʻohana. I fell in love with the land that we name ʻāina. And, in fact, I fell in love with the aloha spirit.”

That aloha spirit is an enormous a part of Salesforce’s company id. The phrase ʻohana, Hawaiian for “household,” is a typical chorus at enterprise conferences, in company blogs and on social media. And Fridays at Salesforce have been known as Aloha shirt days, replete with firm occasions that embody hula dancers and Hawaiian drummers. Greater than as soon as, Benioff has thrown a Hawaiian luau on the World Financial Discussion board confab in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual Salesforce get together.

When development obtained underway in 2014 for the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, the town’s tallest constructing, Benioff had his longtime mates and Hawaiian non secular advisers Danny Akaka Jr. and Anna Akaka bless the realm. (Danny is the son of late U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka.) The Akakas have additionally blessed Salesforce conferences and different tasks that Benioff has labored on.

“The Hawaiians at all times believed that everytime you embark upon a brand new journey, whether or not it is a voyage or making a brand new canoe or constructing a heiau [temple], it at all times must be preceded by a blessing,” Danny Akaka Jr. instructed me in an interview. “Marc additionally felt like that too — that no matter is completed needs to be performed in a manner that is pono, that is good.”

In 2022, Salesforce rented a 75-acre luxury retreat center in California for its workers to return collectively and bond. Benioff instructed The Wall Road Journal that his imaginative and prescient was to purchase a large property and construct his personal retreat-like ranch for his workers. One of many properties he floated was in Maui, however in line with the Journal, he hadn’t but settled on a location.

As I continued to piece collectively Benioff’s land purchases in Waimea, a colleague at NPR obtained an out-of-the-blue textual content from him. Phrase had gotten again to Benioff that I used to be poking round city. He wished to talk with me.

A “critically zen” billionaire identified for philanthropy

Benioff’s CEO persona is not that of your typical cutthroat winner-takes-all billionaire. He is seen extra as a socialite tech guru who hangs out with folks like New Age writer Deepak Chopra, Bono and a Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit. He employed actor Matthew McConaughey (who’s additionally usually seen round Waimea) to be Salesforce’s model ambassador. One in every of Benioff’s books is even titled Compassionate Capitalism.

GQ calls him “critically zen,” Fortune says he is one of few CEOs who has achieved “rock star–degree standing” and Forbes calls him a “large of generosity.”

Benioff’s present internet price is round $10.3 billion, in line with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And during the last 12 months, by NPR’s calculation, his wealth has risen by a mean of $9.5 million per day.

It may be arduous to fathom that a lot cash, says Rachel Sherman, a sociology professor at The New Faculty who studies wealth. “Similar to how a lot a billion really is,” she says. “It isn’t just a bit bit greater than 1,000,000.”

Benioff is a well known philanthropist. Within the Bay Space, his title is plastered throughout the town. He and his spouse, Lynne Benioff, donated $250 million to UCSF Benioff Kids’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. He has given thousands and thousands of {dollars} to native faculties, pledged $2 million to champion a homelessness initiative and has thrown his help behind LGBTQ+ rights. Salesforce, as an organization, has donated tons of of thousands and thousands too.

Salesforce additionally paid $0 in federal taxes from 2018 to 2020, in line with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. When requested for remark, a Salesforce spokesperson says the corporate “totally complies with all tax legal guidelines.”

In 2018, Benioff and his spouse purchased Time journal for $190 million. He would not shrink back from publicity.

But, relating to Hawaii, Benioff is extraordinarily non-public.

We communicate for the primary time in December on a Zoom name that lasts 90 minutes. Over the next days, Benioff texts me continuously, typically many instances a day. The first focus of those texts is to attract consideration to his philanthropy in Hawaii, which has virtually all been nameless. He provides me to a number of group threads with individuals who find out about his charity.

He talks about donations to the fireplace division, which embody huge vans that may roll over the rocky lava terrain widespread within the space (Benioff calls them “monster vans”). He has given cash to public faculties via the state’s Division of Training and purchased a number of houses for academics at a neighborhood non-public faculty. He flew in 1 million masks for cover in opposition to COVID-19 in the course of the pandemic. He works with the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Particles Undertaking, and there are island reforestation tasks with a gaggle known as American Forests. He says he is additionally engaged on main well being care grants with Gov. Josh Inexperienced.

Benioff says he likes to search out native organizations already doing the work and to present them what they want. He is able to go public, he says. He releases his nonprofit companions from their anonymity agreements to talk with me.

Because the starting, I would defined to Benioff that I used to be engaged on this story after listening to from townspeople anxious about what was taking place together with his land purchases in Waimea.

A couple of week after we first talked, Benioff emails to say he simply printed a information launch about certainly one of his land tracts known as Ouli. “You impressed me together with your thought to dispel the myths and fears,” he later texts, referring to what I’ve instructed him was the aim of my story. He tops off that textual content dialog with an angel emoji.

The Ouli project covers 282 acres that Benioff and his spouse purchased and donated to the Hawaii Island Group Improvement Corp., which builds reasonably priced housing on the Large Island. The group has developed almost 900 houses right here during the last 30 years. The preliminary plan is to construct about 40 homes on the presently uninhabited property in Ouli, however that quantity may develop. The mission is about 6 miles out of city, and due to the terrain and scope of the mission, it will not be performed for a number of years.

Keith Kato, the group’s soft-spoken govt director, gives me a tour in his four-wheel-drive pickup. It is a clear day, and you’ll see the ocean within the distance and snow glistening off the highest of Mauna Kea. He reveals me one other subdivision that his group constructed, which resembles what Ouli will appear like — modest single-story houses on 10,000-square-foot heaps. It is on the dry aspect of city, the place the rainforest fades to grassland overlaying an historic lava discipline.

“It is attention-grabbing that you’ve individuals who have that a lot wealth and that they are really keen to place it to make use of locally,” Kato says. “So this was like a present from heaven, so to talk.”

“Hopefully we get a few of the rumors put to mattress,” he provides. The thriller round Ouli is solved, however dozens extra properties stay.

“I am not a prepper”

In January, I pull as much as a residential house that Benioff purchased in Waimea in late 2020. It is a midcentury trendy home made from redwood that sits on a hillside and has sweeping views of the city under and volcanoes within the background. Fowl-of-paradise flowers flourish exterior, together with monstera vines and an avocado tree. A wild turkey pecks on the grass. Benioff’s Hummer is parked out entrance.

Benioff calls this his Waimea workplace, and I am right here to interview him in particular person. As I get located, I meet two assistants — who’re each named Kendall — and his two golden retrievers, Brandy and Honey.

His paintings consists of the well-known anti-capitalist Liquidated Google print by French graffiti artist Zevs and a wall-size portray by the Brazilian graffiti duo OSGEMEOS. Benioff says the Brazilian artists are his mates. He additionally has an array of Hawaiian artwork, together with a group of vintage lei niho palaoa necklaces which might be made with an ivory pendant strung by thick cords of intricately woven human hair.

We sit down on an enormous white semicircle sofa; Brandy and Honey be a part of us. A Salesforce adviser tunes in from New Jersey through a Zoom name. One wall of this room is papered nook to nook with journal covers and newspaper articles about Benioff. I deliver up Zuckerberg and Ellison, who’ve famously bought tons of land in Hawaii, and ask Benioff how he sees himself in contrast with them.

“Our philosophy has at all times been totally different, which is that we’re actually solely right here to have a house for our household after which to present,” he says. “We do not have outsized properties. We have now principally sufficient for ourselves.”

“I am not a prepper,” he provides, once I ask him a couple of bunker (like those Zuckerberg and different tech billionaires have deliberate).

Benioff deflects the vast majority of my questions to speak about his philanthropy once more. How he has donated thousands and thousands to the fireplace division — his beachside house has almost burned down. How his philosophy is to present unconditionally with out anticipating something in return. How he has donated round $100 million in Hawaii and has been in a position to stay nameless till now.

He is adamant that he is not constructing a Salesforce facility in Waimea.

“There’s nothing owned by Salesforce in Hawaii. There by no means shall be,” Benioff says. “Sadly, let me inform you the fact of Waimea and Hawaii: We would not be capable of do it. There is not sufficient land, and there is not sufficient housing.”

“So for individuals who say to me, and plenty of have, ‘Oh, I heard you are going to deliver a Salesforce campus right here — you are bringing over 50 folks or 100 folks.’ They do not perceive what is going on on on this city and this state,” he provides.

After I ask Benioff concerning the properties within the nameless LLCs, issues appear to take a flip. He begins talking extra shortly and fidgets with a bit of paper in his hand. He is reluctant to undergo the holdings, and his adviser on the Zoom name jumps in to say we are able to focus on later.

He does give me some tidbits. He says he has a non-public ranch with 10 horses the place he lets a neighborhood household run their cattle. He says that he has household residing right here and that he is beginning a group assembly middle.

A few days earlier than the interview, Benioff texted the identical NPR colleague once more, asking for intel on my story. Then he known as me and demanded to know the title of this piece. Throughout that decision, he additionally talked about he knew the precise space the place I used to be staying. Unnerved, I requested how he knew, and he mentioned, “It is my job. You may have a job and I’ve a job.” Throughout the interview, he brings up extra private particulars about me and my household.

I go away the assembly disconcerted and nonetheless unclear about what precisely is going on together with his land in Waimea.

The next day, I drive round with a photographer to take photos of the city and Benioff’s tasks. We go to the property he described as a group middle and are confronted by certainly one of his workers. The photographer explains we’re there to take images of the surface of the constructing. Shortly afterward, I get a textual content from Benioff. His worker appeared to suppose we have been “snooping,” and he says he is escalating the incident to NPR CEO John Lansing. Lansing confirmed he spoke with Benioff, with out going into element — the NPR newsroom operates independently, and the CEO shouldn’t be concerned in editorial decision-making. Benioff did not reply to my query concerning the goal of this name.

What’s at stake

Hawaii has gone via main demographic shifts over the previous few years. Extra Native Hawaiians now live outside the state than on the islands, in line with the U.S. Census Bureau. Kamehameha Colleges’ Technique & Transformation Group, which research Native Hawaiian well-being, looked at why they may be leaving and located that the state’s excessive value of residing and lack of reasonably priced housing are main elements.

Throughout the state, median house costs have risen by at the very least 22% from pre-pandemic costs, in line with Redfin. In Waimea, it seems particularly dire. Median house costs topped $1 million in January, up 87% from costs earlier than the pandemic.

Tim Richards, a state senator and sixth-generation Hawaii resident whose household has lived within the Waimea space for the final 100 years, says the start of the pandemic is when issues actually modified.

“We noticed an inflow of individuals coming from the mainland who wished to get someplace that was, I assume, extra remoted,” Richards says. “We noticed an enormous uptick of home gross sales and big uptick of median value. … And that poses an issue.”

“What younger couple can afford that? Significantly. The reply is no person,” he says.

As I tick via Benioff’s property, I tabulate that 11 of the 38 land parcels are for philanthropy and centered on reasonably priced housing. These embody a cluster for the Ouli mission and 5 residential properties, which have been gifted to a non-public faculty in Waimea in 2022. He says one parcel of land adjoining to Ouli, which is 158 acres, can also be deliberate for philanthropic use.

Benioff additionally purchased industrial property on the town in 2022, which included the Mamane Bakery that shut down after he bought it.

That is now the situation of the group middle that Benioff says he is establishing. After I go to, his worker refers to it as a Jewish group middle and I see Hebrew writing on the wall, however Benioff says it should have many various makes use of. Though it is not but completed, Benioff says the middle has already been open for “all group use” since September and has served many various spiritual and secular teams.

Benioff’s 24 remaining parcels of land, about 165 acres, are put aside for him and his relations. There’s the non-public ranch with horses and a couple of dozen houses scattered throughout Waimea and down by the seashore. He says his anonymity has been motivated by his need to take care of his household’s privateness.

So, the vast majority of Benioff’s land buys have not been about Salesforce or his philanthropy — however slightly for private use.

About three weeks in the past, he texts me saying, “I simply learn this report and thought it might curiosity you.” The report is by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a conservative suppose tank. It analyzes housing within the state and concludes that “regulatory limitations” are inflicting the housing disaster and “there is no such thing as a proof that exterior consumers are the driving consider Hawaii’s excessive housing prices or lack of reasonably priced housing.”

I believe again to that statue within the middle of Waimea depicting Ikua Purdy roping the wild bull.

The statue’s plaque tells the story of cattle first arriving in Hawaii in 1793, given as presents to King Kamehameha I. However quickly the cattle overran the land. “It was not lengthy earlier than they overpopulated and plundered the countryside from the mountains to the seashores,” the plaque reads. It is arduous not to consider the parallels to the islands’ lengthy historical past of newcomers arriving, and of right this moment, with billionaires shopping for up the land.

I ask Richards about Waimea and what occurred with the cattle. It was the Hawaiian cowboys, the paniolos, he tells me, who discovered to subdue them.

“Waimea was and nonetheless is, largely, a cow city,” he says. However, he provides, if we do not take note of what’s taking place, “we are going to lose the material that makes Hawaii, Hawaii.”

NPR’s Daniel Wooden contributed to this report.