Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have bought Strancally Castle and its 440-acre estate in County Waterford as an Irish base. He is the third tech billionaire to buy a large Irish country estate since 2021, after Stripe’s John Collison and James Dyson.
Mark Zuckerberg has bought a castle in Ireland. He and Priscilla Chan have taken Strancally, a gothic house of 1830 with 440 acres in County Waterford, as a base for visits to the country.
The price is not public. The deal was done off market, and the Irish Times, which reported it first, estimates a value between €20mn and €30mn.
He is the third technology billionaire to do this in five years. Stripe co-founder John Collison bought the 1,100-acre Abbey Leix estate in County Laois for about €20mn in 2021, and James Dyson bought Ballynatray for around €30mn in 2024, a few miles down the same river valley.
Meta made the connection itself. Its spokesperson noted the family looks forward to time in Ireland, “where Meta maintains its international headquarters.”
That headquarters is a serious piece of the company. Meta opened its Dublin campus in Ballsbridge in 2023, in the former headquarters of Allied Irish Banks, and routes much of its non-US business through the country.
Ireland is also where Meta is policed. The Irish Data Protection Commission is its lead regulator under GDPR, and Meta has collected more than half of all fines issued under the regulation.
The timing is unhelpful rather than illegal. A Meta whistleblower testified this week that Zuckerberg had lied about the company’s concern for child safety, in a trial still under way.
The house itself has a decent story. Strancally was built for John Keily, a Conservative MP, by the architects James and George Richard Pain, on a scale that puts a four and a half minute walk between the dining room and the kitchen.
The sellers are leaving after 25 years. Michael Alen-Buckley, a co-founder of the investment firm RAB Capital, and his wife Giancarla restored the property in the early 2000s and say they are glad it will be maintained.
None of this is a corporate transaction, and that is rather the point. The private wealth of American platform founders is settling in the same small country that hosts their European operations, their tax base and their regulator.
Ireland has been asked before whether it can hold both roles at once. The question of whether it can enforce GDPR properly on companies that employ thousands of its citizens has never been settled, and a castle in Waterford does not change it either way.
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