Bill Gates net worth
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What is Bill Gates’ net worth?
Bill Gates is an American business magnate, Microsoft founder, former chairman and CEO, philanthropist and writer. At the time of writing, Bill Gates has a net worth of US$131 billion. For most of the past 20 years, Bill Gates has been the richest man in the world. In July 2017, when he was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, he fell to the second richest person in the world. Today, he has been one of the five richest people on the planet.
As you may know, Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded the software company Microsoft, known as one of the pioneer entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Today, he owns less than 1.3% of Microsoft’s shares. Over the years, he sold tens of billions of dollars worth of Microsoft stock. His sales income funded Cascade Investment LLC, a tool Gates used to invest in hundreds of other companies.
Bill Gates net worth milestone
early life
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. Gates was bullied when he was a child. He prefers to stay in his room, and when his mother asks what he is doing, he will yell “I’m thinking”. At the age of 13, he entered the private lakeside preparatory school and wrote his first software program. He was in the eighth grade in his first year at Lakeside, and the mother’s club of the school used the proceeds from fundraising activities to purchase a teletypewriter Model 33 ASR terminal and time on a GE computer for the school’s students. Gates became interested in programming GE computers with BASIC. He wrote his first program-Tic Tac Toe on this computer. Players play games on the computer. In the end, Gates and his friends Paul Allen, Rick Wayland, and Kent Evans were banned from using the school’s computers after they were found to have exploited vulnerabilities in the operating system to gain free time. These four students formed the Lakeside Programmer Club to make money.
After the ban ended, the boys offered to look for loopholes in the software in exchange for extra computer time. Gates began to study the code of programs running on computers, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine languages. In 1971, the lakeside teacher asked Gates and Evans to automate the school’s curriculum scheduling system. Friends wrote the software in a way-Gates changed the code to let him have more interesting girls in the class. Gates and Evans hope to get the new system up and running before the senior year. Then, at the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountaineering accident. Gates turned to Allen to help him complete the lakeside project.
In their senior year, Gates and Allen founded a company called Traf-O-Data and made a flow counter on the Intel 8008 processor. He graduated from Lakeside School in 1973 and entered Harvard in the fall of 1973. At Harvard, Gates took mathematics and graduate-level computer science courses. He met Steve Ballmer at Harvard. Gates dropped out of college at the end of his sophomore year.
Profession
With the release of the Intel 8080 CPU-based MTS Altair 8800, Gates and Paul Allen saw it as an opportunity needed to create their own computer software company. The creators of the new microcomputer Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) used their Altair simulator and BASIC interpreter running on the microcomputer to establish a partnership with Gates and Allen. The brand name Microsoft was registered on November 26, 1976. In the first five years of Microsoft’s establishment, Gates personally reviewed every line of code released by the company, often rewriting the code as needed. On November 20, 1985, Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft went public in 1986 with an opening price of $21. After the trading day, the stock closed at US$27.75, and 45% of Bill’s shares were valued at US$350 million. Less than a year later, after the stock price soared, he became a billionaire. He was 31 years old that year.
Gates announced on June 15, 2006 that he would transition from Microsoft’s daily work in the next two years in order to devote more time to charity.
On March 13, 2020, Gates announced his resignation as chairman of Microsoft.
| Bill Gates net worth milestone: | |
| 1986 | US$350 million |
| year 1987 | US$1.25 billion |
| 1990 | $2.5 billion |
| 1990 | $15 billion |
| 1997 | US$40 billion |
| Year 1999 | $85 billion |
| 2000’s | $63 billion |
| Year 2008 | $58 billion |
| Year 2009 | US$40 billion |
| Year 2014 | US$76 billion |
| 2020 year | 130 billion U.S. dollars |
*** In a very brief moment in 1999, his net worth exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars. After adjusting for inflation, this is the same as today’s value of $153 billion.
personal life
In 1987, Melinda French joined Microsoft’s product development department. At some point, she and Bill were sitting side by side at work dinner. They hit it off, and Bill quickly called Melinda to ask her out. Melinda was eventually promoted to the position of general manager of information products. She worked at Microsoft until 1996.
Bill and Melinda got married on January 1, 1994 on a golf course in Lanai, Hawaii. They have three children; Phoebe Adele, Rory John and Jennifer Catherine.
Gates bought the Leicester Code, a collection of scientific works by Leonardo da Vinci, for $30.8 million in a 1994 auction.
The Gates and his wife joined three family foundations in 2000 to create the Bill and Melinda Gates Charity Foundation, which is the world’s largest transparently operating charity foundation.
On December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a pledge called the “Giving Pledge”, which is a pledge of at least half of their wealth within a period of time Donate to charity.
Net worth details
Since the company’s initial public offering in 1986, Bill Gates has sold at least $40 billion in Microsoft stock and received more than $12 billion in dividends. He used the money to create the holding company Cascade Railroad and Automation. Gates is a philanthropist who donated the 3.3 billion US dollars he received in 2004 to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He still holds a 1.3% stake in Microsoft.
real estate
Seattle, Washington: The Gates family owns many impressive properties in the United States. He may also own a home abroad, but knows little about these purchases.
In Washington, the Gates family lives in an incredible mansion nicknamed “Xanadu 2.0.” After Bill acquired this lakefront property for US$2 million in 1988, it took 7 years and US$63 million to build this arguably the most impressive private residence in the world.
Located on a hillside overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington, the main house alone occupies 66,000 square feet. The 66,000-square-foot estate has a 60-foot swimming pool with underwater music system, a 2,500-square-foot gym and a 1,000-square-foot dining room, six kitchens and a dining room that can seat 200 people. Gates is an avid reader, and a sentence from “The Great Gatsby” is engraved on the ceiling of his large family library. The library has a collection of priceless works, including works by Leonardo.
According to reports, the annual property tax of this mansion is 1.063 million U.S. dollars and the estimated value is 150 million U.S. dollars.
Rancho Santa Fe, California: In October 2014, the Gates family spent US$18 million to purchase a 228-acre ranch in Rancho Sante Fe near San Diego, California. They bought the property from weight loss tycoon Jenny Craig. The property is called “Rancho Paseana” and is a horse ranch. Gates’ daughter Jennifer is an avid rider. The property has a racetrack, orchard, five barns, and even a suite for full-time veterinarians.
Del Mar, California: In April 2020, Bill and Melinda spent $43 million to purchase an amazing waterfront mansion in Del Mar, California, about 15 minutes from their Rancho Santa Fe ranch. They bought the house from the widow of the late oil billionaire/investor T. Boone Pickens.
Wellington, Florida: In 2013, Gates spent US$8.7 million to purchase a second horse ranch located in Wellington, Florida. Previously, the family had rented this mansion in the town for Jennifer Gates (Jennifer Gates) games many times. They like this house very much and they bought it.
Cody, Huai: In 2009, Gates purchased a 492-acre ranch in Cody, Wyoming for an undisclosed price. The ranch was once owned by William “Buffalo Bills” Cody, and it was originally listed for $12 million. Before Bill became the owner, it was listed for $8.9 million. In about 150 years, the ranch had only three owners.
commercial estate: Through his investment fund Cascade, Gates owns the rights and interests of several famous hotels. He owns part of the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He owns about half of all Four Seasons hotels in the world. He and a group of investors own the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.
Generalize
Bill Gates’ net worth is 131 billion U.S. dollars. At the time of writing, this makes him one of the richest people in the world. Since Microsoft’s initial public offering in 1986, Bill’s net assets have grown from 250 million U.S. dollars to more than 100 billion U.S. dollars. In 1999, at the peak of the Internet boom, Gates’ wealth once exceeded US$99 billion. After adjusting for inflation, this is equivalent to about $153 billion today.
