Sophie Alexander. He died on Monday, "being held by his loving wife, Gioia, and his two loving children, John Jr. and Laura," his daughter, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, wrote in a blog post. She is married to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
Arrillaga and his business partner, Richard Peery, were little known outside of Silicon Valley, but their impact on the region has been immense. The two worked together for 50 years at their firm, Peery Arrillaga, and built more than 20 million square feet of corporate campuses for Apple Inc., Google and Cisco Systems Inc., among others.
"Arrillaga was the creative visionary, while Peery was their financial and legal mastermind," his daughter wrote. "Together they partnered on the negotiations, and John was known as 'the toughest dealmaker in Silicon Valley,' given his focus on construction and leasing."
Bloomberg estimated Arrillaga's net worth to be $2.5 billion as of 2019.
He was a prominent philanthropist, mainly giving to his alma mater, Stanford University. In 2013, he gave the school $151 million, the largest gift of its kind at the time.
The school's Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center carries the name of his late wife, who died in 1995.
According to a 2001 profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, Arrillaga was admitted to Stanford on a basketball scholarship and came "from modest means, his Basque parents having immigrated from Spain and his father earning a living as a grocery wholesaler in Southern California."
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