Praisidio CEO lists Atherton mansion for $42M

Praisidio CEO Ken Klein has listed his Atherton estate for $42 million, the top asking price in the country’s most expensive zip code.

Klein and wife Natalie bought the property in February 2000 for $5 million, according to public records, and finished building their three-level, 12,000-square-foot home at 6 Betty Lane in 2004. It has five bedrooms, six full baths, two half-baths, a library, theater and gym.

The house has a European feel with Venetian plaster walls on the main level and upstairs hallway, limestone floors from French quarries, and antique mantels and light fixtures, according to listing notes from listing agents Brent and Mary Gullixson. They did not reply to a request for comment.

This is the second ultra-high-end listing for the mother-son Compass team this week, as they also listed tech billionaire Marc Andressen’s $33 million Atherton mansion. That property is only 1.5 acres, compared with 2.3 acres across two lots for the Kleins’ estate.

In addition to the main house, the Kleins also built a guest house with its own parking garage, as well as an “entertainment pavilion” with a full kitchen, multiple lounging and dining areas and a wood-fired pizza oven. There’s also a bath cabana by the pool and spa, as well as a tennis court. The elaborate gardens have organic vegetables, flower cutting beds, heirloom roses and a reflecting pond with irises, as well as a fruit orchard and wildflower and lavender fields.

When Klein built the property he was chairman and CEO at embedded software company Wind River Systems, according to his LinkedIn profile. Wind River sold to Intel for $884 million under his watch. He stayed for several years after the acquisition but eventually moved on to several other tech companies before co-founding Praisidio, an AI-based employee retention and risk management company in 2019.

He is also a board member at the University of Southern California, and his wife is the longtime co-chair of the university-owned KDFC classical radio station. They gave the station $1 million in 2013, its largest-ever donation.

The ultra-high-end market in Atherton has grown active early in the spring, with 20 sales above $5 million in February alone and a median asking price of nearly $15 million, according to a recent Compass report. Listings in the greater “Stanford Circle,” which also includes toney towns Palo Alto, Los Altos and Woodside, were up 43 percent in February compared with one year ago.

The co-founder of a Brazilian mobile gaming company spent nearly $25 million on two side-by-side properties in Atherton in January. The co-founder of The Gap apparel stores sold a piece of her Atherton estate in February for $15.5 million to luxury home builders who intend to split the 2-acre lot and demolish the existing home for redevelopment. Just this month, Zynga’s CEO sold his Atherton home for $10 million as well.