--- title: Sean Parker: This Is How Tech Billionaires Do Philanthropy description: Sean Parker, founder of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy spoke at Fortune's Brainstorm Health Conference in San Diego. canonical: https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-11-03T08:59:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:50:42.042Z article:section: Health og:title: Sean Parker: The Tech Billionaires that Wants to Hack Cancer og:description: Napster founder and Facebook funder is putting his billions to cancer research og:url: https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf365c1e380e44b22/6988acd097cdff1a686ae713/gettyimages-137805579.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Day Three Of The World Economic Forum 2012 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Sean Parker: The Tech Billionaires that Wants to Hack Cancer twitter:description: Napster founder and Facebook funder is putting his billions to cancer research twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf365c1e380e44b22/6988acd097cdff1a686ae713/gettyimages-137805579.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Napster Founder Sean Parker Wants to Hack Cancer > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b39d280b-41f1-42b9-8554-7480c27617d1&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Erika Fry / Fortune](https://time.com/author/fortune/) ## Erika Fry / Fortune Fortune Nov 3, 2016 8:59 AM UTC  Tech Billionaire Sean Parker at a Davos conference in 2012. Tech Billionaire Sean Parker at a Davos conference in 2012. Simon Dawson—Bloomberg/Getty Images by [Erika Fry / Fortune](https://time.com/author/fortune/) ## Erika Fry / Fortune Fortune Nov 3, 2016 8:59 AM UTC Earlier this year, Sean Parker—Napster founder, Facebook funder, and serial disruptor—launched his latest and most ambitious project to change the world. With his own $250 million gift, he created the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, to well, hack cancer. That may sound like a worthy, if ridiculously naive aim from a tech billionaire. But this wasn’t just a well-minted philanthropist throwing money at a cause. This was a project in which Parker himself was fully and deeply engaged: For years, he steeped himself in the science of immunology (renowned cancer researcher Jim Allison compares Parker to “an advanced post-doc”); he made friends with the field’s leading scientists (like Allison); and he studied and identified the flaws of the drug development system. Perhaps, most spectacularly, he got six of the nation’s most revered cancer hospitals—from Memorial Sloan-Kettering to Stanford—to sign an agreement to pool and share their collective intellectual property, a promising and unprecedented level of collaboration in a field that has long been hindered by its competitive, non-cooperative approach. But Parker’s involvement didn’t stop with the launch of the institute. He attends the center’s meetings and he remains fully engaged in its work. His ongoing involvement in the Institute was one of the reasons his esteemed partners were willing to participate, he said at _Fortune’s_ Brainstorm Health conference in San Diego on Wednesday. In that way, says Parker, his institute represents a new brand of philanthropy—that of his fellow tech moguls, who approach problems with a “hacker phenotype.” He says of this ilk: “They come with an intellectual self-confidence, the feeling that you can take on really complex challenges if you put your mind to it. And these are people who have been validated in thinking that way.” He adds that their approach to philanthropy will be more hands on and that that’s a good thing. “As they approach these problems, they bring a tech-driven mindset that is going to be useful and this intellectual confidence that gives them the ability to enter these fields and to engage on an intellectual level and not just as a donor.” _This_ [_article_](http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/sean-parker-philanthropy/) _originally appeared on_ [_Fortune.com_](http://fortune.com/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/"},"headline":"Napster Founder Sean Parker Wants to Hack Cancer","datePublished":"2016-11-03T08:59:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:50:42.042Z","description":"He represents a new brand of philanthropy from the “hacker phenotype”","url":"https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/","keywords":["Tech","Cancer","philanthropy"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf365c1e380e44b22/6988acd097cdff1a686ae713/gettyimages-137805579.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Erika Fry / Fortune"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf365c1e380e44b22/6988acd097cdff1a686ae713/gettyimages-137805579.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Day Three Of The World Economic Forum 2012","caption":"Day Three Of The World Economic Forum 2012","creditText":"Simon Dawson—Bloomberg/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4556005/sean-parker-cancer-research/","name":"Napster Founder Sean Parker Wants to Hack Cancer"}}]}] ```