Bill Gates

01William Henry Gates III, born October 28, 1955, is an American businessman and philanthropist best known for his roles at Microsoft Corporation.

02He co-founded the software company with his childhood friend Paul Allen and later held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer, CEO, president, and chief software architect.

03He was also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014.

04He was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

05Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington.

06In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

07Gates led the company as its chairman and chief executive officer until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer.

08But he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect.

09During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive.

10In June 2008, Gates transitioned into a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda had established in 2000.

11He stepped down as chairman of the Microsoft board in February 2014 and assumed the role of technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

12In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.

13Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's top billionaires.

14From 1995 to 2017, he held the title of the wealthiest person in the world every year except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013.

15In 1999, he became the first ever centibillionaire when his net worth briefly surpassed 100 billion US dollars.

16Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued other business and philanthropic endeavors.

17He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including Ben, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy.

18He has donated to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity.

19Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa.

20In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledged to give at least half of their wealth towards philanthropy, early life and education.

21William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington as the only son of William H.

22Gates' senor, 1925-2020, and his first wife, Mary Maxwell Gates, 1929-1994.

23His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish-scots-irish.

24His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate Bank System and United Way of America.

25Gates' maternal grandfather J.

26W.

27Maxwell was a national bank president.

28Gates also has an older sister Christy, Christiane, and a younger sister Libby.

29He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or Trey, that is three, because his father had the two suffix.

30The family lived in the Sandpoint area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was seven.

31When Gates was young his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law.

32During his childhood, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination.

33Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child.

34The family encouraged competition.

35One visitor reported that it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock.

36There was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing.

37At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside Prep School.

38When he was in eighth grade, the mother's club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric GE computer for the students.

39Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.

40He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer.

41Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly.

42After the mother's club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DC PDP minicomputers.

43One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, CCC, which banned Gates, Paul Allen, Rick Weiland, and Gates' best friend and first business partner Kent Evans for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

44The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money.

45At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time.

46Rather than using the system remotely via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and Machine Language.

47The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business.

48The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return.

49The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year.

50Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates described as one of the saddest days of his life.

51He then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.

52At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traffodata to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.

53In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives.

54He was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973.

55He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests, SAT, and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.

56He did not stay at Harvard long enough to choose a concentration, but took mathematics, including Math 55, and graduate-level computer science courses.

57While at Harvard, he met fellow student and future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

58Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude.

59Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014.

60Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Professor Harry Lewis.

61His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%.

62His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitria.

63Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.

64In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company.

65Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year.

66His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company.

67He explained his decision to leave Harvard.

68If things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school.

69I was officially on leave.

70Microsoft.

71Basic.

72Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, MITS, to inform them that he and others were working on a basic interpreter for the platform.

73In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it.

74They merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest.

75MITS President Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the basic interpreter.

76The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

77It was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair Basic.

78MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975.

79Allen named their partnership Microsoft, a combination of microcomputer and software, and their first office was in Albuquerque.

80The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Rick Weiland.

81They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name Microsoft with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976.

82Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

83Microsoft's Altair Basic was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed.

84In February 1976, he wrote an open letter to hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair Basic had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair hobby market was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software.

85This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment.

86Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.

87The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

88Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years.

89As the company grew, he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive.

90Donkey.bas is a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC-DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC.

91It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys.

92The game was written by Gates and Neil Conson.

93IBM Partnership IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC, after Gates' mother mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then-CEO.

94IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the basic interpreter.

95IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research, DRI, makers of the widely used CP-M operating system.

96IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement.

97IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system.

98A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP-M, that Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products, SCP, had made for hardware similar to the PC.

99Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner.

100Microsoft employed Patterson to adapt the operating system for the PC and delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.

101The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee.

102It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world.

103Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware.

104They did, making the IBM-compatible PC running DOS a de facto standard.

105The sales of MS-DOS, the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM, made Microsoft a major player in the industry.

106The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC.

107PC Magazine asked if Gates was the man behind the machine.

108Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which reincorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman.

109In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity.

110Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school lakeside.

111They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018.

112Windows Microsoft and Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use.

113In August 1986, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS-2.

114Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences.

115The operating system grew out of DOS in an organic fashion over a decade until Windows 95, which hid the DOS prompt by default.

116Windows XP was released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO.

117Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W.

118Thompson on February 5, 2014.

119Management style.

120During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products.

121But his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive.

122He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989.

123Jerry Pornell wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel, Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money, although I'm sure it will do that, but because it's a neat hack.

124During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive.

125This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.

126In June 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy.

127He gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundy in charge of long-term product strategy.

128The process took two years to fully transfer his duties to Ozzie and Mundy, and was completed on June 27, 2008, post-Microsoft.

129Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects.

130He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 to become technology advisor at the firm to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

131Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in an interview that was published in the March 2014 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

132In the interview, he provided his perspective on climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America.

133In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated, There'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic or nuclear or bioterrorism.

134Gates also identified innovation as the real driver of progress and pronounced that America's way better today than it's ever been.

135Gates has often expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence.

136In a Reddit Ask Me Anything, he stated that, First, the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be superintelligent.

137That should be positive if we manage it well.

138A few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern.

139I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.

140In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015 with Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Lee, Gates said he would highly recommend Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence, Paths, Dangers, Strategies.

141During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

142In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030.

143In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake.

144He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time.

145That same year, Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.

146In March 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate himself to philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education.

147The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2021 that Gates stepped down before Microsoft's board finished its investigation into Gates' alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a Microsoft employee, which an external law firm had begun probing in late 2019.

148During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates has widely been looked at by media outlets as an expert on the issue, despite him not being a public official or having any prior medical training.

149His foundation did, however, establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19.

150And, as of February 2021, Gates expressed that he and Anthony Fauci frequently talk and collaborate on matters including vaccines and other medical innovations to fight the pandemic.

151Business Ventures and Investments Gates has a multi-billion-dollar investment portfolio with stakes in companies in multiple sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including AutoNation, an automotive retailer which trades on the NYSE and in which Gates has a 16% stake.

152BGC3 LLC A think tank and research company founded by Gates Canadian National Railway CN A Canadian Class 1 freight railway As of 2019, Gates is the single largest shareholder of the company.

153Cascade Investment LLC A private investment and holding company incorporated in the United States Founded and controlled by Gates and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the United States with his land holdings owned through Cascade Investment totaling 242,000 acres across 19 states He is the 49th largest private owner of land in the U.S.

154Carbon Engineering, a for-profit venture founded by David Keith, which Gates helped fund It is also supported by Chevron Corporation and Occidental Petroleum EscopyX Keith's academic venture in sundimming geoengineering, which Gates provided most of the $12 million for Corbis Originally named Interactive Home Systems and now known as Branded Entertainment Network A digital image licensing and rights services company founded and chaired by Gates EarthNow, a Seattle-based startup company aiming to blanket the earth with live satellite video coverage Gates is a large financial backer Eclipse Aviation, a defunct manufacturer of very light jets Gates was a major stakeholder early on in the project Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products Some of the $396 million Patrick O Brown collected for his business came from Gates around 2014 to 2017 Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets Combined with the shares owned by the foundation, Gates owns 11.6% of the company A shareholder agreement in 2012 allowed him to own up to 25% of the company But this agreement was removed ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists Gates participated in a $35 million round of financing along with other investors TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company co-founded and chaired by Gates Which is developing next-generation traveling wave reactor nuclear power plants in an effort to tackle climate change Breakthrough Energy Ventures A closed fund for wealthy individuals who seek ROI on a 20-year horizon See next section Which is funding green startups and a host of other low-carbon entrepreneurial projects Including everything from advanced nuclear technology to synthetic breast milk It was founded by Gates in 2015 Ginkgo BioWorks, a biotech startup that received $350 million in venture funding in 2019 In part from Gates' investment firm Cascade Investment Luminous Computing, a company that develops neuromorphic photonic integrated circuits for AI acceleration Mologic, a British diagnostic technology company that Gates purchased, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund Which has developed 10-minute COVID lateral flow tests that it aims to make for as little as $1 Climate change and energy Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty And bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices In 2011, he said If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly I'd pick the energy thing In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources Global energy transitions have historically taken decades He wrote, I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating And because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private sector investment To enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy Grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy And solar fuels Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris One was Mission Innovation In which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy in over five years' time Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy A group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups Committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy In December 2020, he called for the U.S.

155Federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production Gates has been criticized for holding a large stake in signature aviation A company that services emissions-intensive private jets In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact But says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail He would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices After he published his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Parts of the climate activist community criticized Gates' approach as technological solutionism In 2022, educational streamer Wondrium produced the series Solving for Zero The Search for Climate Innovation Inspired by the Book In June 2021, Gates' company TerraPower and Warren Buffett's Pacific Orp announced the first sodium nuclear reactor in Wyoming Wyoming Governor Mike Gordon hailed the project as a step toward carbon-negative nuclear power Wyoming Senator John Barrasso also said that it could boost the state's once-active uranium mining industry Gates spent many efforts to make pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because of his importance to climate He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill from the year 2019 And especially in the months before the adoption of the bill The bill should cut the global greenhouse gas emissions in a level similar to eliminating the annual planet warming pollution of France and Germany combined And may help to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees The target of the Paris Agreement He thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in the New York Times Where he said Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history Given its potential to spur development of new technologies Gates gave further insights on climate change in his commencement address at Northern Arizona University on May 6, 2023 Where he was bestowed an honorary doctorate Political Positions In October 2024, the New York Times reported Gates had recently donated $50 million to Future Forward USA Action A 501C4 organization supporting Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign In response to the report, he did not explicitly address the donation or endorse Harris But said this election is different Regulation of the software industry In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate During the Federal Trade Commissions, FDC, investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s Gates was reportedly upset at then-Commissioner Dennis Yao for float a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power According to one source, Gates was vexed He started by calling Yao's ideas socialistic, recalls a source familiar with the July 15 meeting And as he got angrier and angrier and louder and louder, he got into calling them communistic Donald Trump Facebook bond After Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms on February 18, 2021 As a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack Gates said a permanent ban of Trump would be a shame and would be an extreme measure He warned that it would cause polarization if users with different political views divide up among various social networks And said, I don't think banning somebody who actually did get a fair number of votes in the presidential election Well less than a majority But I don't think having him off forever would be that good Patents for COVID-19 vaccines In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable But eventually the West will help when in reality the US and UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break protections It's disgusting Gates is opposed to the trip's waiver Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information As it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software Cryptocurrencies Gates has been critical of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin According to him, cryptocurrencies provide no valuable output, contribute nothing to society, and pose a danger especially for smaller investors who could not survive the potentially high losses Gates also does not own any cryptocurrencies himself Philanthropy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D.

156Rockefeller and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the William H.

157Gates Foundation In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Which was identified by the funds for NGOs company in 2013 As the world's largest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion The foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent Unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust Gates, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to the Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009 Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence He and his father met with Rockefeller several times And their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus Whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations The foundation is organized into five program areas Global Development Division Global Health Division United States Division And Global Policy and Advocacy Division Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects Granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria As well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and support scholarships at universities The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing golden rice A genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency The foundation aims to provide women and girls in the developing world with information and support regarding contraception And ultimately universal access to consensual family planning In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility, it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return While using voting rights to influence company practices Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shireen Bond virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020 On the topic, Building Infrastructure for Resilience What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion Governments are there to think ahead to bad things that might happen In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, not enough was done We can't forget that another pandemic will come and we'll need to invest in being ready in that While not forgetting that we were not prepared and we're going to have to invest Just like having a fire department Some money in an intelligent way and actually simulate what might happen and make sure that we're ready for it Gates favors the normalization of COVID-19 masks In a November 2020 interview, he said What are these, like, nudists?

158I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants And no American says or very few Americans say that that's like some terrible thing Personal donations Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwin family Who sold their home and gave away half of its value As detailed in their book, The Power of Half Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwin to Seattle to speak about what the family had done And on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the Giving Pledge Which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity The foundation has received criticism, particularly over its role in Common Core With critics stating the support is cronyist in that it profits from the federal, state, and local contracts Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the William H.

159Gates' building that was designed by architect Frank Gehry While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates The Maxwell-Dwerkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A.

160Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Stephen A.

161Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering Sciences and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering Sciences and Applied Sciences and Applied Sciences Paul of Sciences and Applied Sciences and Applied Sciences and Applied Sciences!!

162Paul of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Applied Sciences Paul of Engineering Sciences and Applied Sciences Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems.

163For example, they announced the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, which has received considerable media interest.

164To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was produced from human feces in 2014.

165It was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor.

166In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.

167In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

168He also pledged an additional $50 million to startup ventures working in Alzheimer's research.

169Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance.

170With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth.

171On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood-affected victims in Kerala, India.

172In June 2018, Gates offered free e-books to all new graduates of U.S., colleges and universities, and in 2021, offered free e-books to all college and university students around the world.

173The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks.

174In July 2022, he reiterated the commitment he had made by starting the Giving Pledge campaign by announcing on his Twitter channel he planned to give virtually all his wealth to charity and eventually move off of the list of the world's richest people.

175Charity Sports Events In April 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis player Roger Federer in playing in the match for Africa 4, a non-competitive tennis match at a sold-out key arena in Seattle.

176The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa.

177Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam.

178The pair won the match six games to four.

179Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa.

180The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center.

181Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a Grand Slam winner in Doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today Show.

182Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6-3, and the event raised over $2.5 million.

183Books Gates has authored four books.

184The Road Ahead, co-authored with Microsoft executive Nathan Mervold and journalist Peter Ranierson, was published in November 1995.

185It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway.

186Business at the Speed of Thought, co-authored with Collins Hemingway, was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help to get an edge on the competition.

187How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, published in February 2021, presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems.

188How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, published in April 2022, details the COVID-19 pandemic and proposes a global epidemic response and mobilization germ team with annual funding of $1 billion, under the auspices of the WHO.

189Personal Life Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.

190He also enjoys bridge, golf, and tennis.

191His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S.

192President's Schedule Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach, economy class, in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet.

193Gates purchased the Codex Lester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.

194In 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting lost on the Grand Banks, at the time a record price for an American painting.

195In 2016, he revealed that he was colorblind.

196On May 10, 2022, Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms.

197Gates has received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine—marriage, family, and divorce.

198In 1987, at a trade fair in New York, Gates met Melinda French, a recent graduate of Duke University who had begun working at Microsoft around four months earlier.

199Gates and French became engaged in 1993 after dating for six years.

200They married on January 1, 1994, at the 12th hole of the Jack Nicklaus-designed Manele golf course on the Hawaiian island of L'nai.

201They had three children together—Jennifer Catherine Gates Nassar, born April 26, 1996, Rory John Gates, born May 23, 1999, and Phoebe Adele Gates, born September 14, 2002.

202The family resided in an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.

203In 2009, property taxes on the mansion were reported to be $1.063 million, on a total assessed value of $147.5 million.

204The 66,000-square-foot, 6,100-square-meters, estate has a 60-foot, 18M, swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500-square-foot, 230-square-meters, gym, and a 1,000-square-foot, 93-square-meters, dining room.

205On May 3, 2021, the couple announced their decision to divorce after more than 27 years of marriage.

206The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had begun meeting with divorce attorneys in 2019, citing interviews that suggested Gates' ties with Jeffrey Epstein were among her concerns.

207However, the couple delayed their divorce until their youngest daughter Phoebe had graduated from high school.

208The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021, and the financial details have remained confidential.

209In February 2023, Gates confirmed that he was dating Paula Hurd, widow of former Oracle Corporation and Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd.

210Gates became a grandfather in March 2023 when his eldest daughter Jennifer, who had married Olympic equestrian Nail Nasser in October 2021, gave birth to a daughter.

211In June 2024, Jennifer announced that she is pregnant with a second child.

212Public image.

213Gates' public image has changed over the years.

214At first he was perceived as a brilliant but ruthless robber baron.

215A nerd-turned-tycoon.

216Starting in 2000 with the foundation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and particularly after he stepped down as head of Microsoft, he turned his attention to philanthropy, spending more than $50 billion on causes like health, poverty, and education.

217His image morphed from tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior to a huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist, celebrated on magazine covers, and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change.

218Still another shift in public opinion came in 2021 with the announcement that he and Melinda were divorcing.

219Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extramarital affair, and a friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

220This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from a lovable nerd who was out to save the world to a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health.

221Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image.

222In September 2022, Politico published an exposé critical of NGO leadership at the helm of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper Die Welt.

223Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine.

224Gates and the projects of his foundation have been the subject of many conspiracy theories that proliferate on Facebook and elsewhere.

225He has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips.

226These unfounded theories reached a new level of influence during the COVID-19 pandemic when, according to New York Times journalist Rory Smith, the uncertainties of pandemic life drove people to seek explanations from the internet.

227When asked about the theories, Gates has remarked that some people are tempted by the simple explanation that an evil person rather than biological factors are to blame, and that he does not know for what purpose anyone believes he would want to track them with microchips.

228Religious views In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said in regard to his faith, The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

229We've raised our kids in a religious way.

230They've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in.

231I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world.

232And that's kind of a religious belief.

233I mean, it's at least a moral belief.

234In the same 2014 interview, he also said, I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths.

235Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them.

236Now science has filled in some of the realm, not all that religion used to fill.

237But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing.

238And there's no scientific explanation of how it came about.

239To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view.

240I think it makes sense to believe in God.

241But exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

242Wealth.

243In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's first ever America's richest issue.

244He was the world's youngest ever self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.25 billion.

245Since then, he has been featured on the world's billionaires list and was ranked as the richest person in 1995, 1996, 1998 to 2007, and 2009, maintaining the position until 2018 when Jeff Bezos surpassed his wealth.

246Gates was ranked first on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1993 to 2007, in 2009, and from 2014 to 2017.

247As of June 2024, he has an estimated net worth of $154 billion, making him the sixth richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

248Gates' wealth briefly surpassed $100 billion in 1999, making him the first person to reach this net worth.

249After 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings declined, partly because of the decline in Microsoft stock price after the dot-com bubble burst, and partly because of the multi-billion dollar donations he had made to his charitable foundations.

250In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world, because he disliked the attention that it brought.

251In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

252Slim regained the position again in June 2014, but then lost the top position back to Gates.

253Gates, between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from $40 billion to $82 billion.

254In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.

255In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked sixth with a wealth of $115.0 billion.

256He once again became the richest person in the world in November 2019 after a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, surpassing Bezos.

257Gates told the BBC, I've paid more tax than any individual ever, and gladly so.

258I've paid over $6 billion in taxes.

259He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich.

260Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 U.S.

261dollars, and a bonus of $350,000 U.S.

262dollars, for a total of $966,667 U.S.

263dollars.

264In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company.

265In 2004, he became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by longtime friend Warren Buffett.

266Controversies, Antitrust Litigation.

267During his tenure as CEO of Microsoft, Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices.

268In the 1998 United States v.

269Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive.

270He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as compete, concerned, and we.

271Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head.

272Business Week reported.

273Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying I don't recall so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle.

274Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of email that Gates both sent and received.

275Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions.

276Did I fence with Boies?

277I plead guilty.

278Rudeness to Boies in the first degree.

279Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying, and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, treatment of colleagues and employees.

280Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding in 1975 until 2006.

281He gained a reputation for being distant from others.

282An industry executive complained in 1981 that Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls.

283An Atari executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times.

284When they met again a month later, Gates won or tied every game.

285He had studied the game until he solved it.

286That is a competitor.

287In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates, according to Allen, conspired to reduce the latter's share in Microsoft by issuing himself stock options.

288In his autobiography, Allen would later recall that Gates was scheming to rip me off.

289It was mercenary opportunism plain and simple.

290Gates says he remembers the episode differently.

291Allen would also recall that Gates was prone to shouting episodes.

292Gates has often been accused of bullying Microsoft employees.

293He met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative, berating them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.

294Gates saw competition in personal terms.

295When Borland's Turbo Pascal performed better than Microsoft's own tools, he yelled at programming director Greg Witten for half an hour because Gates believed Borland's Philippe Kahn had surpassed Gates.

296Gates interrupted presentations with such comments as, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?

297The target of his outburst would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced.

298Not all harsh language was criticism.

299A manager recalled that you're full of shit.

300That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard meant that Gates was amazed.

301In the lore of Microsoft, if Bill says that to you, you're made.

302When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, I'll do it over the weekend.

303Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein A 2019 New York Times article reported that Gates' relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with his wife in the fall of 2013, despite her declared discomfort.

304Gates said in 2011 about Epstein, his lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing, although it would not work for me.

305The depth of the friendship between Gates and Epstein is unclear, though Gates generally commented that I met him.

306I didn't have any business relationship or friendship with him.

307However, Gates visited Epstein many times, despite past.

308It was reported that Epstein and Gates discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy.

309However, in an interview in 2019, Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally.

310In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea.

311Gates added it was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there.

312Gates came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that he had traveled on Epstein's private jet, though further claims about Gates traveling to Little St.

313James proved unsubstantiated.

314It has also been reported that Epstein and Gates met with Nobel Committee Chair Thorbjorn Jagland at his residence in Strasbourg, France, in March 2013 to discuss the Nobel Prize.

315Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute, which has received millions in grants from the Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million community engagement grant in October 2013.

316In 2023, it was reported that Epstein threatened to expose an alleged affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player.

317Recognition.

318Time magazine listed Gates as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century in 1999, as well as one of the 100 most influential people in 2004, 2005, and 2006 respectively.

319Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda, and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.

320In 2006, he was voted 8th in the list of heroes of our time published by New Statesmen.

321Gates was listed in the Sunday Times Power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers Magazine in 1994, ranked number 1 in the top 50 cyber elite by Time in 1998, ranked number 2 in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was also included in The Guardian as one of the top 100 influential people in media in 2001.

322Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nien Road Business Universiteit 1996, KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2002, Wasida University 2005, Tsinghua University 2007, Harvard University 2007, the Karolinska Institute 2007, the University of Cambridge 2009, and Northern Arizona University 2023.

323He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.

324In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, DFBCS.

325In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal.

326Gates was elected a member of the U.S.

327National Academy of Engineering in 1996 for contributions to the founding and development of personal computing.

328Entomologists named Bill Gates Flowerfly, Aristalis Gattesi, in his honor in 1997.

329He was awarded American Library Association honorary membership in 1998.

330In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for greatest public service benefiting the disadvantaged.

331Gates was made an honorary knight commander of the Order of the British Empire, KBE, by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

332He was given the 2006 James C.

333Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the Tech Awards.

334In January 2006, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the then President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio.

335In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program Unpaced Electors.

336Gates received the 2010 Bauer Award for Business Leadership from the Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work.

337Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.

338According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011.

339In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda received the Padma Bouchon, India's third highest civilian award for their social work in the country.

340In 2016, Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts.

341In 2017, François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda Gates with France's highest national order as commanders in the Legion of Honor for their charity efforts.

342He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017.

343In 2019, Gates was awarded the Professor Hawking Fellowship of the Cambridge Union in the University of Cambridge.

344In 2020, Gates received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions to Japan and the world in regard to worldwide technological transformation and advancement of global health.

345In 2021, Gates was nominated at the 11th Annual Streamy Awards for the crossover for his personal YouTube channel.

346In 2022, Gates received the Hilleli Pakistan, the second highest civilian award in Pakistan for his social work in the country.

347Depiction in media, documentary films about Gates, The Machine That Changed the World, 1990, Triumph of the Nerds, 1996, Nerds 2.0.1, 1998, Waiting for Superman, 2010, The Virtual Revolution, 2010, Inside Bill's Brain, Decoding Bill Gates, 2019, Feature Films, 1999, Pirates of Silicon Valley, a film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997.

348Gates is portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall, 2002, Nothing So Strange, a mockumentary featuring Gates as the subject of a modern assassination.

349Gates briefly appears at the start, played by Steve Syers, 2010, The Social Network, a film that chronicles the development of Facebook.

350Gates is portrayed by Steve Syers, 2015, Steve Jobs vs.

351Bill Gates, The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974-1999, Original Film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius Series, Video and Film Clips, 1983, Steve Jobs hosts Gates and others in the Macintosh Dating Game at the Macintosh Pre-Launch Event, a parody of the television game show The Dating Game, 1991, Gates spoke to the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group lively weekly Thursday night meeting with questions and answers in PSL Hall, renamed Pimentel Hall in 1994, at University of California, Berkeley, 2007, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together at the D5 conference on YouTube, All Things Digital.

352Since 2009, Gates has given numerous TED Talks on current concerns such as innovation, education, and fighting global diseases.

353Radio, Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31, 2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda and French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits, for example reading The Economist from cover to cover every week.

354His choice of things to take on a desert island were, for music, Blue Skies by Willie Nelson, a book, The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, and Luxury Item, a DVD collection of lectures from the teaching company, television, Gates starred as himself in a brief appearance on the Frasier episode, the 200th episode.

355He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory in an episode titled The Gates Excitation.

356He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley.

357Gates was parroted in the Simpsons episode Das Bus.

358In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the Amal Rajan interview series on BBC Two and was the subject of an episode of the UK Channel 4 series The Billionaires Who Made Our World.

359This was the English Wikipedia article about Bill Gates as of December 4th, 2024, narrated by AI-generated voice via the open-source software Sony Translate.

360of the UK Channel 4 and the UK Channel 4 and the UK Channel 4