Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) co-founder Paul Allen has bought the New Mexico strip mall where the software giant started out in the 1970s, the real estate agent who brokered the deal said on Friday. Allen is rumored to have plans for a Microsoft museum in the Albuquerque region where he and partner Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, first developed the operating system for a mass-market personal computer. They worked out of an office in the strip mall in a run- down part of Albuquerque before they went on to incorporate Microsoft in 1976. Real estate agent Terry Hertweck said a property company owned by Allen bought the 25,000 square-foot (2,300-square-metre) mall in October.

``They were specifically looking to purchase this building, which is a bit unusual,'' Hertweck said. Fueling speculation about plans for a museum was Allen's purchase several months later of an old bank building nearby for $650,000, well above market price. Jason Hunke, a spokesman for Allen, said on Friday any talk of a museum was speculation. ``None of it is based on anything factual.''