William Henry Gates III is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, building it into the world’s largest software company and, for much of the 1990s and 2000s, the wealthiest person on the planet.
Gates stepped down as Microsoft’s chief executive in 2000 and has spent much of the following quarter century directing his wealth and attention toward the Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization he co-founded that has distributed more than $100 billion toward global health, poverty reduction, and education since 2000.
His public standing has been shaped in recent years by his high-profile 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates and, more recently, by renewed scrutiny over his past association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a matter on which he testified before the US House Oversight Committee in June 2026.
Quick Facts
| Quick Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | William Henry Gates III |
| Date of Birth | October 28, 1955 |
| Age | 70 years, 11 months, 27 days |
| Place of Birth | Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Profession | Entrepreneur, philanthropist, author |
| Known For | Co-founding Microsoft; the Gates Foundation; the Giving Pledge |
| Education | Lakeside School, Seattle; Harvard University (attended 1973 to 1975, did not graduate) |
| Companies | Microsoft (co-founder, former CEO and chairman); Cascade Investment LLC; TerraPower |
| Major Position(s) | Former CEO and Chairman of Microsoft; Co-chair of the Gates Foundation |
| Spouse/Partner | Divorced from Melinda French Gates (married 1994, divorced 2021) |
| Children | Three: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe |
| Net Worth | Estimated between $103 billion and $108 billion as of 2026 (see Net Worth section) |
Who Is Bill Gates?
Bill Gates is an American entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, whose MS-DOS and Windows operating systems became the dominant software platforms for personal computers worldwide from the 1980s onward. He served as CEO until 2000 and remained chairman until 2014, presiding over Microsoft’s growth into the world’s most valuable software business and becoming the wealthiest person in the world for much of the period between 1995 and 2018.
Since stepping back from Microsoft’s daily operations, Gates has directed most of his public attention toward the Gates Foundation, which he co-founded with his then-wife Melinda in 2000 and which has become one of the largest private philanthropic organizations in the world. He co-created the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett in 2010, committing to donate the substantial majority of his fortune, and the foundation intends to spend down its full endowment and cease operations by 2045.
Early Life and Childhood
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, the second of three children of William H. Gates Sr., a prominent Seattle attorney, and Mary Maxwell Gates, who served on several corporate and nonprofit boards, including as a director of United Way and First Interstate Bank. He grew up in an upper-middle-class household that placed a strong emphasis on education and civic involvement.
Gates’s parents enrolled him at Lakeside School, a private preparatory school in Seattle, where he had his first direct exposure to computers through a teletype terminal connected to a mainframe computer downtown. He wrote his first computer program, a version of tic-tac-toe, at around age thirteen, and spent extensive hours at the school’s computer lab alongside classmate Paul Allen, developing a shared fascination with programming that would shape both of their futures.
Education
Gates scored 1590 out of a possible 1600 on his SAT and enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973, initially intending to study law, following his father’s profession. He spent considerably more time in Harvard’s computer labs than in his coursework, and during his sophomore year, he and Allen developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the MITS Altair 8800, one of the first commercially successful microcomputers, a project that became the direct catalyst for founding their own company.
In 1975, during his junior year, Gates left Harvard without completing his degree to devote himself fully to the fledgling software business he and Allen were building. Harvard later awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2007, though he did not complete his original undergraduate degree.
Early Career
Gates’s professional path before Microsoft consisted largely of informal, self-directed programming work rather than conventional employment. As a young teenager, he and several Lakeside classmates, including Allen, formed a small programming group that was hired to find bugs in software used by a local company, Computer Center Corporation, in exchange for computer time, an early, hands-on apprenticeship in software development. He also worked briefly for TRW Inc. on a power-grid software project during high school, gaining additional practical programming experience before he had finished secondary school.
This informal but intensive early experience, combined with his and Allen’s continued programming work during his time at Harvard, gave Gates a level of practical software development expertise well beyond most of his university peers by the time the Altair 8800 created the commercial opportunity that led to Microsoft’s founding.
Entrepreneurial Journey
Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 1975, initially to develop and sell a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800. The pivotal moment in the company’s early growth came in 1980, when IBM approached Microsoft to provide an operating system for its new line of personal computers; Microsoft acquired the rights to an existing operating system, adapted it into MS-DOS, and licensed it to IBM, a deal structured so that Microsoft retained the right to license the software to other computer manufacturers as well, a decision that became central to the company’s subsequent dominance of the personal computer software market.
Microsoft moved its headquarters to the Seattle area in 1979 and went public in March 1986, an IPO that made Gates, then thirty, one of the youngest self-made billionaires in history once the company’s stock appreciated in subsequent years.
Major Companies and Ventures
Microsoft: Co-founded by Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, Microsoft became the dominant supplier of operating system software for personal computers through MS-DOS and, from 1985, the Windows graphical operating system. Gates served as CEO until January 2000, handing the role to Steve Ballmer, and remained chairman until 2014. As of 2026, Gates owns less than 1.3 percent of Microsoft, having sold or donated the substantial majority of his original stake over the preceding decades.
Cascade Investment LLC: A private investment vehicle Gates established, managed since 1994 by investor Michael Larson. Cascade holds a diversified portfolio built from the proceeds of his Microsoft stock sales and dividends, including stakes in Canadian National Railway, Deere & Company, Ecolab, and Waste Management, a majority ownership position in Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and more than 270,000 acres of US farmland, making Gates the largest private farmland owner in the country.
TerraPower: A nuclear energy company Gates founded in 2006 to develop advanced reactor technology, including a commercial reactor project under construction in Kemmerer, Wyoming, reflecting his continued involvement in clean energy innovation alongside his philanthropic climate work.
Technology and Innovation
Gates’s most significant direct technical contribution came during Microsoft’s earliest years, when he personally wrote substantial portions of the company’s early BASIC interpreter and contributed directly to its foundational software products. As Microsoft grew, his role shifted from hands-on programmer to strategic leader, though he remained closely involved in product direction, including the development of Windows and Office.
His technology-related activity since leaving day-to-day operations has centered more on philanthropic applications of technology, including funding vaccine delivery innovation and agricultural technology through the Gates Foundation, and his advisory involvement in TerraPower’s nuclear reactor development.
Major Products, Projects and Achievements
Microsoft’s MS-DOS, licensed to IBM in 1981, and the subsequent Windows operating system, first released in 1985, became the dominant software platforms for personal computers worldwide, a market position Microsoft maintained through subsequent decades even as competitors emerged. Microsoft Office, first bundled in 1990, became similarly dominant in workplace productivity software.
Since 2000, the Gates Foundation’s major achievements include substantial contributions to the near-eradication of polio globally, significant funding toward malaria prevention and treatment research, and support for vaccine development and distribution infrastructure in developing countries through partnerships including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The foundation approved a record $9 billion annual giving budget for 2026, part of a broader plan to accelerate its spending ahead of its planned 2045 closure.
Leadership and Management
As Microsoft’s chief executive through the 1980s and 1990s, Gates was known for an intensely demanding, detail-oriented management style, including a reputation for rigorously questioning executives and engineers on technical and strategic decisions. This coincided with Microsoft’s period of most dominant market growth, though the company also faced a major US antitrust case during Gates’s tenure, resulting in a 2001 settlement following a finding that Microsoft had engaged in anticompetitive practices related to Windows bundling.
Since leaving Microsoft’s operational leadership, Gates has led the Gates Foundation in a co-chair capacity, a role requiring a different kind of institutional leadership centered on grant-making strategy rather than product and corporate management.
Investments and Business Interests
The substantial majority of Gates’s wealth is no longer directly tied to Microsoft equity, having shifted over several decades into Cascade Investment. Cascade’s disclosed public holdings, drawn from periodic SEC filings, have included stakes in Canadian National Railway, Deere, Ecolab, and Waste Management, alongside private assets including its Four Seasons majority stake and large US farmland holdings. Cascade’s complete portfolio, including many private holdings, is not fully disclosed publicly, meaning outside estimates rely on partial data rather than complete audited figures.
Separate from Cascade, Gates has made personal investment commitments to TerraPower and Breakthrough Energy, a group of investment funds he founded in 2015 to support early-stage clean energy technology, reflecting a deliberate personal focus on climate and energy innovation distinct from Cascade’s more diversified holdings.
Awards and Recognition
Gates received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in November 2016, one of the United States’ highest civilian honors, recognizing his contributions to technology and global philanthropy. He has received numerous honorary degrees from universities worldwide, including from Harvard University in 2007, decades after he left the institution without completing his original degree.
He has also appeared repeatedly atop global wealth rankings published by Forbes and Bloomberg, having held the position of world’s wealthiest individual for extended periods between 1995 and 2018, a ranking distinction rather than a formal award.
Personal Life
Bill Gates married Melinda French, whom he met at a 1987 Microsoft press event where she worked as a company employee, in January 1994. The couple had three children: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe. Gates and French Gates announced their separation in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage, and their divorce was finalized later that year.
As part of the settlement, Gates agreed to transfer significant additional wealth to French Gates for her own philanthropic work; tax records showed he transferred nearly $7.88 billion to Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation, a nonprofit French Gates established, in 2024, part of a broader $12.5 billion commitment. French Gates stepped down as co-chair of the Gates Foundation in May 2024. Gates continues to reside at his longtime Medina, Washington, estate on Lake Washington, a 66,000-square-foot property known as Xanadu 2.0, appraised at approximately $132 million for the main residence in 2025.
Philanthropy and Social Impact
Gates and Melinda French Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, combining two earlier family foundations with an initial contribution of close to $16 billion; Gates’s father served as one of its first co-chairs. The foundation, renamed the Gates Foundation following Melinda’s 2024 board departure, has since distributed more than $100 billion toward global health, disease eradication, agricultural development, and education, with particular emphasis on combating malaria, polio, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS in developing countries.
In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett co-created the Giving Pledge, inviting the world’s wealthiest individuals to commit publicly to donating the majority of their fortunes to philanthropy; Gates has stated his own intention to give away the substantial majority of his wealth, and the foundation has committed to spending its full endowment and closing by 2045. Warren Buffett was historically the foundation’s largest outside donor, having contributed roughly $43 billion between 2006 and 2024, though that relationship became strained in 2026 amid the controversy below.
Controversies and Criticism
Gates’s public standing has been significantly affected in 2025 and 2026 by renewed scrutiny of his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges. Gates has acknowledged meeting with Epstein on multiple occasions beginning around 2011 and continuing sporadically until 2014, meetings he initially hoped might benefit his global health philanthropy work, but which he has since publicly described as a “huge mistake” and, separately, as “foolish.” A 2021 New York Times investigation reported that Gates began his association with Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, and Melinda French Gates has stated publicly that her former husband’s continued contact with Epstein was a factor in their 2021 separation.
Files released by the US Department of Justice in early 2026 included notes drafted by Epstein referencing Gates, including suggestions of extramarital affairs; representatives for Gates strongly denied these specific claims, describing them to the New York Times as “absolutely absurd and completely false” and characterizing Epstein as a “proven, disgruntled liar.” Gates has not been charged with any crime in connection with the Epstein matter and has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein’s identified victims. He gave voluntary, closed-door testimony to the US House Oversight Committee on June 10, 2026, denying any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. The controversy has had direct consequences for the foundation’s donor relationships: Warren Buffett paused his customary annual gift in 2026 while an outside law firm, WilmerHale, reviewed the organization’s historical ties to Epstein, and in July 2026 Buffett redirected his planned donation, roughly $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares, to separate foundations run by his own children instead. This article presents these developments as documented through congressional testimony, tax and legal filings, and on-record statements, distinguishing Gates’s own admissions regarding his judgment in associating with Epstein from the specifically denied allegations regarding his personal conduct.
Bill Gates Net Worth
Bill Gates’s net worth is estimated between approximately $103 billion and $108 billion as of 2026, according to differing estimates from Forbes, Bloomberg, and Visual Capitalist, reflecting genuine uncertainty in valuing the private portions of his portfolio. Bloomberg’s tracker showed his fortune declining by approximately $15.6 billion during the first several months of 2026 alone, reflecting both market performance and continued large-scale charitable transfers.
Only a small fraction of his current wealth, less than 1.3 percent of Microsoft and worth roughly $38 billion at recent share prices, remains directly tied to his original company; the substantial majority, more than $100 billion, is held through Cascade Investment. Bloomberg’s methodology was further adjusted in January 2026 to remove an additional $12.5 billion tied to his divorce-related wealth transfer commitment to Melinda French Gates, illustrating how deliberate transfers, not just market performance, continue to shape published estimates. Because Cascade’s complete private holdings are not fully disclosed, any specific net worth figure for Gates should be treated as an informed estimate rather than a precisely audited total.
Current Role and Recent Activities
As of 2026, Gates continues to serve as co-chair of the Gates Foundation, directing its accelerated giving strategy ahead of the organization’s planned 2045 closure, including its record $9 billion approved giving budget for that year. He remains involved with TerraPower’s nuclear reactor development and Breakthrough Energy’s climate technology investments, and continues to publish writing on global health, pandemic preparedness, and climate policy, including his books How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021) and How to Prevent the Next Pandemic (2022).
His most significant recent public activity has been his June 2026 congressional testimony regarding his association with Jeffrey Epstein, alongside continued public commentary warning that reductions in global foreign aid and health funding risk what he has described as a potential reversal of decades of progress in global development.
Legacy and Influence
Bill Gates’s role in co-founding Microsoft and steering its development of MS-DOS and Windows placed him at the center of the personal computer revolution, fundamentally shaping how hundreds of millions of people around the world would come to use computers from the 1980s onward. His decision to step back from Microsoft’s daily operations in 2000 to focus on philanthropy, and his subsequent creation of the Gates Foundation and the Giving Pledge, established an influential model for large-scale, strategically directed billionaire philanthropy that a number of subsequent wealthy individuals have explicitly cited as an inspiration.
That legacy now exists alongside the more recent and still-unfolding controversy over his association with Jeffrey Epstein, which has strained some of the foundation’s most significant donor relationships and drawn Gates into a congressional inquiry decades after his most consequential technology achievements. How historians and the public ultimately weigh his transformative role in personal computing and his substantial global health philanthropy against this later controversy remains a matter still being actively shaped by ongoing developments as of this writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Bill Gates? Bill Gates is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and later co-founded the Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest private philanthropic organizations.
How old is Bill Gates? He was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington.
What company did Bill Gates found? He co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, and later founded Cascade Investment LLC and the nuclear energy company TerraPower.
What is Bill Gates known for? He is known for co-founding Microsoft and leading its growth into the dominant personal computer software company, and for his large-scale philanthropy through the Gates Foundation.
What is Bill Gates’s net worth? Estimates for 2026 range from approximately $103 billion to $108 billion, with the majority of his wealth held through his private investment vehicle, Cascade Investment, rather than Microsoft stock directly.
Where did Bill Gates study? He attended Harvard University beginning in 1973 but left in 1975, during his junior year, without completing his degree, to found Microsoft.
Is Bill Gates married? He was married to Melinda French Gates from 1994 until their divorce in 2021. He has not remarried.
What is the Gates Foundation? It is a philanthropic organization Gates co-founded in 2000, focused on global health, poverty reduction, and education, which has distributed more than $100 billion and plans to spend its full endowment and close by 2045.
Sources
- Biography.com, “Bill Gates: Biography, Microsoft Cofounder, Gates Foundation” (February 2025)
- EBSCO Research Starters, “Bill Gates | Biography”
- Bloomberg Billionaires Index, William H. Gates profile
- Forbes, Bill Gates real-time net worth profile (2026)
- Fortune, “The Gates Foundation is investigating its ties to Epstein” (April 2026)
- Fortune, “Bill Gates ‘has to answer’ for Epstein files mentions, Melinda French Gates says” (February 2026)
- IBTimes Australia, “Bill Gates Warns of ‘Dark Ages’ Risk as Epstein Testimony Looms” (April 2026)
- Gates Foundation, official 2026 annual budget announcement