Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has spent millions of dollars quietly buying up roughly 600 acres of green landscapes in Waimea, Hawaii.
Since the year 2000, a bigtime tech billionaire purchased at least 38 parcels of land in the small agricultural town on Hawaii’s Big Island, which boasts a population of less than 10,000.
Inventory is already low in Waimea, so news of the real-estate purchases worried residents — many of which are Native Hawaiian — about rising housing costs and the loss of the tightknit community’s culture, according to NPR.
NPR revealed on Wednesday that the buyer behind all the land purchases was Benioff, whose amassed a $10.5 billion fortune, according to Forbes, as the co-founder and chief of San Francisco-based Salesforce, one of the world’s largest software companies that owns popular business-messaging app Slack.
Benioff has reportedly made the land purchases through at least six anonymous limited liability companies, or LLCs — all with the same mailing address in the San Francisco Bay area — and one nonprofit.
Though none of the documentation has Benioff’s name on it, per NPR, he doesn’t dispute that he owns the acreage — about 25 of which are at beach resorts.
Benioff’s first purchase in Hawaii was a $24.5 million piece of oceanside land at the Marriott-operated Mauna Kea Beach Resort, according to NPR.
He spent the better part of the following 15 years buying up coastal properties at beach resorts, which have a combined market value of $100 million.
During the pandemic, he scooped up 22 parcels of residential, commercial and agricultural land in and around Waimea, NPR reported.
In the majority of instances, Benioff has paid more than the current market value for his Hawaiian properties, per NPR, citing public records.
When he purchased Waimea’s Mamane Bakery back in 2022, for example, he coughed up more than 50% of the market value for the land the bakery sat on for more than three decades as it served up its beloved lilikoi cheesecakes and mango-guava hot cross buns.
NPR found that 11 of the 38 land parcels Benioff has purchased in the area over the past 24 yeasr are for philanthropy and centered around affordable housing, including a residental project that was gifted to a private school in Waimea in 2022.
Where Mamane Bakery used to sit is on its way to becoming a community center, Benioff confirmed to NPR.
The center has reportedly been open for “all community use” since September, and has served many different religious groups. Staffers at the establishment refer to it as a Jewish community center, and there’s Hebrew writing on the wall, according to NPR.
Benioff also owns 282 acres dubbed the Ouli Project, which was donated to the Hawaii Island Community Development Corp. and has been transformed into a destination for affordable housing on the Big Island.
Over the past 30 years, the organization has developed some 900 homes in the Ouli Project, with plans to build at least 40 houses on Ouli land that’s still uninhabited, according to NPR.
Another 158-acre piece of land Benioff owns adjacent to Ouli is also set to be used for philanthropic use, though the plans for the plot weren’t immedaitely clear.
The remaining 24 pieces of land Benioff owns collectively span about 165 acres, NPR reporrted, and are reserved for him and his family members.
They include a private ranch with 10 horses and about a dozen homes across Wimea, where residents told NPR they often see 59-year-old Benioff driving around in his Hummer.
Benioff insisted to NPR that he’s not building a Salesforce office in Waimea.
“There’s nothing owned by Salesforce in Hawaii. There never will be,” Benioff told the outlet. “Unfortunately, let me tell you the reality of Waimea and Hawaii: We wouldn’t be able to do it. There isn’t enough land, and there isn’t enough housing.”
“So for people who say to me, and many have, ‘Oh, I heard you’re going to bring a Salesforce campus here — you’re bringing over 50 people or 100 people.’ They don’t understand what’s going on in this town and this state,” he added.
Benioff also boasted how much he loves Hawaii, telling NPR: “Everyone’s seen the movie ‘South Pacific.’ It’s Bali Ha’i.”
“This is a place that everybody loves to be. It’s a magical place. It’s a place that people come and transform and change, evolve. They experience God. They experience nature. They experience themselves.”
The Post has sought comment from Benioff.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
