Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma which is a cancer of the white blood cells. This is 26 years after Allen fought Hodgkin’s disease which is another type of white blood cell cancer.

Jody Allen, Paul’s sister, sent an e-mail to employees at private asset management company Vulcan Inc. She is the CEO of the company and it was founded by Paul Allen. Below is the e-mail that was sent out by Jody:

To employees of Vulcan and affiliates:

I want to let you know that Paul was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He received the diagnosis early this month and has begun chemotherapy. Doctors say he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma.

This is tough news for Paul and the family. But for those who know Paul’s story, you know he beat Hodgkin’s a little more than 25 years ago and he is optimistic he can beat this, too.

Paul is feeling OK and remains upbeat. He continues to work and he has no plans to change his role at Vulcan. His health comes first, though, and we’ll be sure that nothing intrudes on that.

We would ask you to respect Paul’s privacy and not discuss this outside of the office.

If you have any questions, please ask your EC member.

Thank you in advance for what I know will be all your good thoughts for Paul.

Jody

Bill Gates also issued a statement regarding Allen’s diagnosis:
“Melinda and I have Paul and his family in our thoughts and prayers. Paul is among my closest friends, and I know to him be a strong and resilient individual.”

Microsoft Corporation co-founder Paul Allen founded another company called Vulcan Spectrum LLC. In an auction by the FCC in December 2007, Vulcan Spectrum bought 700MHz spectrum space. But now he decided to sell a large chunk of the spectrum to AT&T, more specifically in sections of Oregon and Washington. AT&T is not disclosing the financial details about the transaction, but AT&T spokesman Michael Coe revealed that the company is making the purchase to meet customer demand and support the transition to LTE.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is working on a new project called Xiant.  Xiant is an e-mail startup that makes using Microsoft Outlook much easier.  Xiant Filer allows users to make message filing much easier.  There is no need to change around Microsoft Outlook to make Filer work.  It integrates quite well within Microsoft Outlook.

There is a one click interface with Xiant Filer for filing messages.  There is also batch filing which allows users to move batches of individual messages.

Working on Xiant may help Allen forget about all the money he lost through his investment with Charter Communications.  Allen invested $7 billion for a 52% stake in Charter, but sold nearly all of his Class A common stock holdings for $996 million last week according to PeHUB.

Xiant is available as a free 60 day trial download from their website.

One of Xiant’s biggest competitors is Y-Combinator startup Xobni.  Xobni has about $14.6 million in funding between Y-Combinator, several VC firms, Cisco, the BlackBerry Partners fund, and several private investors.  However Allen is worth about $10.5 billion as of this year.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen invested $7 billion in Charter Communciations.  Fifty-one percent of Charter Communications, competitor of Comcast, is owned by Allen.  Charter is the fourth largest cable operations company in America with about 5.5 million customers across 27 states.  The stock of the company is about 8 cents per share.

Back in 1999, Charter’s stock was about $27.75.  This was around the time that they had their IPO.  Now the communications company may be facing bankruptcy.  Charter CEO Neil Smit stated that the company is negotiating with bondholders and will be trying to roll over debt into new loans payable.  This would swap debt for equity in Charter.  Charter missed paying their debt payment this month and will be seeing another $1.9 billion in debt coming in this year.  Charter has borrowed about $21 billion.  I think it is suffice to say that Paul Allen will not be investing anymore money into the telecomm company.
Other properties that Paul Allen has invested in is the Seattle Seahawks, DreamWorks SKG, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, USA Networks, CNET, Priceline, Egghead, and Value America.  In 1998, Paul Allen bought Marcus Cable Company for $2.8 billion and paid $4.5 billion for stake in Charter.  Charter ended up acquiring Marcus.

“For over 20 years, I have been talking about and investing in the `wired world,’ a connected future marked by the merger of high-bandwidth data channels, the power of the personal computer, and the availability of compelling content,” stated Allen at the time of the investment.  Charter has never made profit since 1999.

Four former executives at Charter pleaded guilty to inflating revenue, cash flow, and the number of subscribers.  Shareholder lawsuits costed the company $144 million in cash and stock.  Charter CEO Carl Vogel resigned shortly after the controversy.

After Charter introduced their triple play package, subscribers rose once again.  The subscribers paid about $106 per month and the company double operating income to $208 million, but that was all wiped out by $478 million of interest on debt.

Microsoft ended up investing $1 billion in Charter’s biggest competitor in 1997.  Comcast became the nation’s biggest cable company which encourage Microsoft to buy more stock in Comcast in exchange for $5 billion stake in AT&T Broadband in 2002.  Within the last year, Microsoft liquidated all of their shares in Comcast.

[via AP]