Billionaire investor Bill Ackman and his wife donate $400 million for brain research after their 26-year-old daughter suffers massive brain haemorrhage spending weeks in coma

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman and his wife Neri Oxman have pledged approximately $400 million to establish a brain research, rehabilitation, and longevity institute in New York, a decision rooted in a medical emergency that nearly cost their 26-year-old daughter Lucy her life earlier this year.

Ackman disclosed the full details of Lucy's condition and the institute's plans in a public post this week, one of the most personal statements the hedge fund manager has ever shared.

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What happened to Lucy Ackman

At midnight on 6 February, Ackman answered his apartment door to find a security guard handing him a phone. His older daughter Eloise was on the line. She had found Lucy unconscious on the floor of her Williamsburg apartment, with an EMT team already on the scene.

Ackman rushed to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, where Lucy had been taken. When he asked a nurse for an update, he glanced at the computer screen behind him. Next to Lucy's name, it read: non-responsive.

A CAT scan by 2:30am confirmed a massive brain haemorrhage. Lucy needed an emergency hemicraniectomy, a procedure to release pressure on the brain and clear the bleed. Surgery began at 3:15am and ended at 5:30am. It was successful.

The following day, data from Lucy's Oura ring revealed the haemorrhage had occurred around 9am the previous morning, meaning more than 19 hours had passed between the bleed and the completion of surgery. Ackman later learned that the standard of care advises against operating if more than five hours have passed, and that even within that window, the likely outcome is a brief stay in a nursing home followed by death from pneumonia.


How is Lucy Ackman now

Lucy spent several weeks in a coma. When she awoke, she could not breathe on her own, walk, speak, or see.


Six months on, Ackman says she has recovered her cognition, understands her circumstances fully, and can walk more than a hundred steps at a time with assistance. She is making progress with sounds and the early stages of speech. Her vision has not returned.

"Each day, she makes a little progress, and daily progress compounds," Ackman wrote. "We remain optimistic that Lucy will return to normal function. It will likely take years, but I believe it is only a matter of time, hard work, and technological progress, along with some, and perhaps a lot, of divine intervention."

Her care has been led by neurosurgeon Dr Chris Kellner and Dr David Putrino, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation at Mount Sinai Health System. Ackman said the team holds a daily Zoom call to review her progress and adjust her treatment plan.

On the question of Lucy's vision, Ackman pointed to work being done in brain computer interfaces at companies including Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, and Synchron. "If you are going to have a devastating brain injury, now is the best time in history for that to happen," he wrote.

The Ackman Oxman Institute

When Ackman met Lucy's doctors at the hospital, he told them he wanted to give her the best care possible with unlimited resources, and promised that whatever they learned would be made available to everyone. The institute is the fulfilment of that promise.

Named the Ackman Oxman Institute, or AOI, after Ackman and Oxman, it will be housed in a 400,000 square foot Class A biotech facility on West End Avenue in Manhattan between 65th and 66th Streets, acquired by the Pershing Square Foundation. An adjoining 130,000 square foot building at 320 West 66th Street, currently used as studio space by Saturday Night Live, is under contract and expected to close in December. A vacant adjacent lot with additional air rights is also being acquired.

With existing zoning, the campus could reach 680,000 square feet, larger than the footprint of Rockefeller University.

Ackman was direct about what the AOI will not be. "It will not be an academic research institute that produces lots of papers, a Nobel Prize winner or two, but little if any results for patients," he wrote. The focus will be on cures, treatments, devices, rehabilitation, and research aimed at cutting the time from idea to patient.

The AOI will operate as a non-profit but with what Ackman described as highly commercial instincts, including its own venture arm to seed and spin out companies developing brain health technologies.

Bill Ackman $400 million donation

The founding gift, structured as 10 million shares of Pershing Square Inc. and filed publicly with the SEC, is valued at approximately $400 million. A second gift of similar or potentially greater size, not in the form of Pershing Square stock, will also be announced to provide the AOI with short and medium-term operational funding.

The AOI's board includes Dean Kamen, Regeneron CEO George Yancopoulos, Nobel Laureate James Rothman, neuroscientist Bernardo Sabatini, Dr Chris Kellner, Pershing Square Foundation CEO Olivia Flatto, Neri Oxman, and Ackman himself. A CEO is expected to be named by October. Searches are underway for a Chief Scientific Officer, Chief AI Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer.

Who is Bill Ackman

Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, one of the most closely watched hedge funds on Wall Street. His stock picks are tracked by professional investors and his 2.7 million followers on X.

This year alone, Ackman listed both his hedge fund and his new stock-picking vehicle Pershing Square USA on the New York Stock Exchange, revealed six new portfolio positions including Netflix, Visa, and Mastercard, and turned 60. His funds hold positions in companies including Uber, Meta, Amazon, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The AOI donation represents a different chapter, one he says was written entirely by Lucy. "We have learned from Lucy that the brain can recover from even catastrophic injury," he wrote. "The mind is a terrible thing to waste."