2022-Bill Gates Net Worth How Rich Is He Really?
| Microsoft stock shares | 266 million |
| birth date | October 28, 1955 (67 years old) |
| Born in | Seattle, Washington, USA |
| nationality | USA |
| Marital status | divorced from Melinda Gates (since 2021) |
| Profession | Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Investor, Author |
| Full name | William Henry Gates III |
| Children | 3 (Jennifer Katharine, Phoebe Adele, Rory John) |
| size | 1.77 m |
| Founded | Microsoft |
How rich is Bill Gates?
The American computer programmer, investor and author Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world with a fortune of 99.03 billion euros . Bill Gates could actually be the richest man in the world again, but he is involved in charity and donates a lot of his wealth. He himself says he doesn’t care if he eventually disappears from the lists of the richest people in the world. He will continue to move money into his foundation, thereby shrinking his own fortune. But we are sure that he will be considered one of the richest people in the world for a long time to come, even if he donates a lot. Due to various investments and many other commitments, Bill Gates will also have a high income in the current year recorded, although the divorce from his wife Melinda in 2021 consumed a lot of resources.
how it all started
The founder of the popular computer group Microsoft was the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2009. From November 2013, Bill Gates was again at the top of the richest people, but then Amazon boss Jeff Bezos replaced him on July 27, 2017 as the richest person in the world for a full 6 hours. On October 27, 2017, however, Gates finally had to vacate the throne for the Amazon boss.
He dropped out of Harvard to focus on developing his software company. He then made history as a programmer and businessman. The Windows operating system is inextricably linked to his name, and he is at the top of the list of the world’s richest people. He founded the software company in 1975, with Gates retiring in 2008 to pursue more of his charity work. It’s about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which supports Bill with many billions of US dollars and wants to help people in the third world. Total would be x .
One of the richest people in the world – How much money does Bill Gates really have?
With a reported fortune of 99.03 billion euros , the former software inventor broke the 100 billion dollar mark a long time ago. If you follow the developments of the last few years, the trend is clear. In just 5 years, between 2009 and 2014, Gates more than doubled his wealth from $40 billion to $82 billion. The entrepreneur was able to continue to increase his fortune precisely because of the increased share price of Microsoft. From 2013 to 2014 alone, it added $15 billion — $1.5 billion more than Iceland’s gross domestic product was in 2014. He again overtook his Mexican list competitors Carlos Slim Helo and Warren Buffett . Also other tech founders, like Larry Ellison , Mark Zuckerberg , Larry Page , Sergey Brin or Elon Musk can also be found in the top 20.
How Much Does Bill Gates Earn?
If Bill Gates put his fortune in a bank account that earns 3% interest, he would make $8 million every day. That would be 336,000 euros per hour, 5,613 euros per minute and 93 euros per second. Yes, you read that right: Bill Gates earns 93 euros per second. This is of course a purely hypothetical assumption, because the richest man in the world has invested his money a little better and not lying around in the bank account, more on that below.
From university dropout to billionaire company Microsoft
Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955 in Seattle. The suffix is of a genealogical nature: although he was the fourth William in the family history, since his father added the suffix II, the son consequently received the III. William H. Gates II worked successfully as a lawyer. Mother Mary Maxwell-Gates was a teacher in the 1950s and later served on the boards of several large corporations. Ancestors of the family come from England, Germany, Ireland and Scotland. Bill Gates has two sisters, Kristianne and Libby.
Bill Gates and his talents as a programmer
Even at school, he attracted attention due to his special talent in the natural sciences and mathematics. At age 13, he attended the exclusive Lakeside Secondary School in Seattle. As early as eighth grade, he began programming a General Electrics school computer in BASIC. His first program on the device: a digital version of Tic Tac Toe (“Three Connects”). While still a student, he gained further experience with other programming languages on larger and more powerful computers. Also in school, Bill Gates founded the company Traf-O-Data together with school friend Paul Allen. An exclusively developed program for measuring traffic flows then earned the young entrepreneurs a whopping 20,000 dollars.
The course, which began in 1973 at the renowned Harvard University, suffered from Gates’ independent computer activities. He sometimes fell asleep in the math seminars – a result of the extra night shifts in which the foundation stone for Microsoft was laid. In 1975 he broke off his studies and, together with his former classmate and fellow student Allen, concentrated entirely on the Microsoft Corporation, which was founded in the same year. The company developed the MS-DOS operating system for IBM at the beginning of the 1980s, without handing over the copyright to IBM. With the success of IBM, Microsoft and Bill Gates – as “the man behind the machine” – became increasingly well-known. MS DOSwas extended by a graphical user interface: the hour of birth of Microsoft Windows. The first retail version (Windows 1.0) came out on November 20, 1985 and began to revolutionize the world of home computing.
Assets and activities outside of Microsoft:
Stock sale and donations by Bill Gates
In the spring of 2014 , Bill Gates sold 4.6 million Microsoft actions worth around $186 million . He ceded the rank of the largest single shareholder to his business partner and former CEO Steve Ballmer , who now owns the largest share in the group. Gates had already announced in 2006 that he wanted to gradually withdraw from day-to-day Microsoft business. Although he remains active as a businessman and entrepreneur , he is increasingly involved in charitable causes. In August 2017, he sold another 64 million shares worth a total of $4.6 billion, which were promptly donated.
Cascade Investment, L.L.C.
Half of Bill Gates‘ fortune is now in the investment company Cascade Investment, LLC, founded in 1994 and based in Kirkland, Washington. Manager, CIO and at the same time asset manager of Gates is 56-year-old Michael Larson. Since former bond fund manager Larson has been at the helm of the company, Bill Gates’ net worth has grown from $5 billion to around $87 billion. Through Cascade, Gates holds shares in companies such as the beverage company Coca-Cola , the agricultural machinery manufacturer Deere & Company and AutoNation, the largest dealership for new and used vehicles in the USA.
Social commitment through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation emerged in 1999 from a foundation that had existed since 1994. In addition to Bill Gates, his wife Melinda, to whom he has been married since 1994, is the namesake. In addition, the foundation, with a good 1000 employees and endowment capital of over 50 billion dollars, is the largest private foundation in the world. Above all, agricultural and medical projects are funded worldwide.
Berkshire Hathaway
Thanks to a generous endowment from multi-billionaire Warren Buffett , the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns 82 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway holding company, worth $10.5 billion. Buffett announced in 2006 that he would leave 85% of his total wealth to the foundation until his death. Bill Gates is also a member of the Berkshire Hathaway board of directors.
The Giving Pledge
In August 2010, Bill Gates co-founded The Giving Pledge with Melinda and Warren Buffett . The goal is for as many billionaires as possible to advocate giving half of your wealth to charity . The list of members is filled with prominent entrepreneurs from all countries.
startups
In addition to those mentioned, Bill Gates is involved in other companies and, more recently, in the founding of companies. For example, Aquion Energy, developer of innovative battery technology, received $55 million. Another $35 million went to the German startup Research gate, a social network for researchers with 2 million members worldwide. For such investments there is the so-called think tank bgC3, an acronym for Bill Gates Catalyst 3 . The company was established in 2008 to promote advanced scientific, technical and medical projects.
The personal life of Bill Gates
Bill has been married to programmer Melinda French since 1994. Melinda was the project manager for the Microsoft Bob operating system add-on at the time she met Bill. Together, the two have a son, Rory John, and two daughters, Jennifer Katharine and Phoebe Adele. The family lives together in a gorgeous estate in Medina, on Lake Washington. The luxury villa has a living area of 6100 square meters. Of course, a lot of high-tech is built into it. The construction time was a proud 7 years, but the dream house is now exactly how Bill Gates wanted it to be. The work of art was designed by architect James Cutler. The Gates Villa also has a name: “Xanadu 2.0”. Bill Gates’ luxurious home is worth more than $120,000,000 today . He pays $1,000,000 a year in property taxes.