In fact this tradition of rich people founding universities and research is nothing new. Stanford University was founded by a couple who said "The children of California shall be our children" after their child died. Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Technical Schools, and John Harvard donated money and his library to a college founded two years earlier.
Allen donated about $2 billion to charitable causes [1] when he was alive. This included several whimsical stuff that wasn't research like Experience Music Project and Museum of Science Fiction. Relatively I believe he spent far more on luxuries he liked including world's most expensive yatch(es), fleet of private jets, mensions around the world, private music concerts, few sports teams here and there.
> This included several whimsical stuff that wasn't research like Experience Music Project and Museum of Science Fiction.
While not research, those things can have profound impacts on people. Several years ago a Star Wars exhibit came to the Indiana State Museum here in Indianapolis, they had an entire section dedicated to both the prosthetic devices in the film and in real life, one of the video segments playing next to some props from the film and real prosthetic devices was a clip of one of the inventors of the real technology talking about how watching the film version directly led to him pursuing his career and working directly on various prosthetic devices trying to make it a reality.
These sorts of experiences could have profound impact on the creative process for one or more individuals that might have far more profound effects for society than active research.
[1] https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Paul-Allen-s-2-Billion-...