Bill Gates has diversified his riches from Microsoft's software company, and his focus has switched to zero-carbon energy investing and philanthropy. Bill and Melinda Gates announced on Twitter on May 3, 2021, that their 27-year marriage was ending. They will continue to serve as co-chairs of the Gates Foundation.
Melinda Gates has received at least $5.7 billion in stock from Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen (d. 2018) in 1975. When Gates stepped away from the Microsoft board of directors in March 2020, he held around 1% of the software and computing company's stock.
How Did Bill Gates Become a Billionaire?
He owns farms in the United States and has invested in many enterprises, including Canadian National Railway and AutoNation. Bill Gates has given the Gates Foundation $35.8 billion in Microsoft shares so far, according to Forbes.
In 1975, Bill Gates and his childhood best friend, Paul Allen, co-founded Microsoft and Have been its CEO, chairman, and primary software architect since its creation.
In 1980, their MS-DOS technology was adopted as the operating system for IBM systems. Gates' shares alone were worth $350 million when Microsoft went public, making him one of America's richest men.
When Microsoft Office was released in 1990, Bill Gates' income climbed even further, and when Windows 95 was released in 1995, he was briefly the richest man on the planet; his worth reached $100 billion in 1999.
Gates' Cascade Investments firm owns many other companies despite not owning many Microsoft shares. Berkshire Hathaway, Coca-Cola, AutoNation, Deere & Company, Four Seasons hotels (in Houston, Atlanta, and Mexico), Strategic Hotels and Resorts, and the Canadian National Railway.
Bill Gates has also invested in ResearchGate and owns Branded Entertainment Network, an advertising company. As per Parade, Bill Gates is also the chairman of TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design firm.
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Bill Gates' Family
Melinda Gates, Bill Gates's wife, was born in Dallas in 1964 into the family of Ray French, a house rental agency. She is a brilliant and goal-oriented lady who believes that strenuous effort and perseverance will yield significant achievements.
In 1987, Melinda met her future husband at the Expo trade show in New York. They sat next to one another and made an excellent first impression of one another. Bill asked her out on her first date only a few months later, and they were engaged in 1993. A year later, on New Year's Day in Hawaii, they married.
Horseback riding is a favorite pastime of their oldest daughter. She enters and wins many competitions regularly. Her Instagram photographs demonstrate that she never flaunts her money. She is presently a Stanford University student. His son is now in his teens. He is known to have no girlfriends and to be passionate about science. He acquired his first phone when he was thirteen years old, intriguing information about him. His parents thought he was of legal age to own it.
Unfortunately, very little information on their youngest daughter is available. She shares a home worth more than 120 million dollars with her parents, including a swimming pool with an underground water system, five kitchens, and 24 bathrooms. Even though Bill Gates is one of the world's wealthiest individuals, he intends to contribute virtually all of his present fortune of 81 billion dollars to charity.
Bill Gates will pass on only 3% of the money to his offspring. Bill and Melinda want their children to have a feeling of their abilities and not wind up squandering their life, and they embrace their parents' desire to aid the world's poorest people, Stars Changes reported.