Bill Gates’ net worth: How much wealth has he made (and given away)?
At one point considered a “tyrannical technocrat,” today Gates is known as a philanthropic icon.
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It might seem easy to wax philosophical when you’re sitting on more money than most people could ever dream of, but, in a blog post published shortly before the birth of his first grandchild, Bill Gates took stock of his life’s achievements and concluded that money wasn’t really that important, after all.
“Being wealthy makes my life much more comfortable, but not more fulfilling,” wrote the co-founder of Microsoft (MSFT) and perennial placeholder on Forbes’ list of World’s Billionaires. He added that there were only three things in life he needed to feel satisfied: His family, his friends, and doing work that mattered.
After spending much of his life dominating the “world’s richest” lists, Gates has vowed to give away 99.96% of his wealth through his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which advances education and public health initiatives around the globe. His goal is to make the world better for future generations, including his young granddaughter, Leila — and he has given away an astounding $59 billion in the process.
What is Bill Gates’ net worth?
Bill Gates is a millionaire thousands of times over: As of early May 2023, Forbes reported his net worth at over $126.8 billion, most of which came from his position as the largest individual shareholder of Microsoft, which he started with Paul Allen in 1975.
Gates still holds a 1.34% stake, or just shy of 103 million shares, in the tech giant. Microsoft's price has soared in the last few years due to its visionary ventures into artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the gaming industry — thanks in large part to the leadership of its current CEO, Satya Nadella.
Microsoft finished 2023 with a gain of nearly 57% and now boasts a $3 trillion market cap, ahead even of rival Apple (AAPL) .
If Gates had held onto his 45% initial stake in Microsoft after the company’s 1986 IPO, he would be a trillionaire today.
But hindsight is always 20/20, and back in 1987, when Microsoft’s star was still on the rise, Gates became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 32 — which was not too shabby, either. Gates has been ranked atop the list of world’s richest people a whopping 25 times since.
Who is richer than Bill Gates?
Despite his entrance into the three-comma club, Bill Gates is not the wealthiest person in the world. As of February 2024, that distinction goes to Bernard Arnault and family, which controls the LVMH empire, including brands like Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co. and Sephora. Their fortune is currently estimated at $211 billion.
In fact, Bill Gates doesn’t even make the top 5 anymore —here’s where he stands, and who’s ahead of him:
Top 10 richest people in the world
| Rank | Name | Net Worth | Company |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | Bernard Arnault & family | $212 billion | LVMH |
2. | $197.5 billion | Tesla | |
3. | $194 billion | Amazon | |
4. | $168.4 billion | Meta | |
5. | Larry Ellison | $143.8 billion | Oracle |
6. | $128.5 billion | Berkshire Hathaway | |
7. | Bill Gates | $124.1 billion | Microsoft |
8. | Steve Ballmer | $120.7 billion | Microsoft |
9. | Larry Page | $118.2 billion | |
10. | Sergey Brin | $113.3 billion |
Gates, pictured here in the 1980s, was a ‘lovable nerd’ with a revolutionary idea that minted him billions.
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Who is Bill Gates?
Bill Gates probably doesn’t mind where he stands among his fellow billionaires — after all, he’s not trying to hold onto his money. In 1991, five years after Microsoft’s IPO, Gates made his first major gift, a $12 million donation to the University of Washington that endowed a molecular biology research lab.
In 1994, he and then-wife Melinda sold $94 million worth of Microsoft shares and started the William H. Gates Foundation. (In 2000, it combined forces with the Gates Learning Foundation to become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the entity we know today.)
In 2010, Gates, along with his buddy, famed investor Warren Buffett, made the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away half of their wealth to charitable causes. And just where does Buffett send the bulk of his money? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, naturally. Aside from the Gates’ themselves, Buffett is the foundation’s largest contributor, donating a whopping $35.7 billion to its initiatives since 2006.
Coincidentally, Gates believes that his philanthropy is very similar in nature to his work at Microsoft. “[As a philanthropist,] I get to use 80% of the same type of thinking that I exercised at Microsoft,” he told Village Global, noting how both roles involve teamwork, supporting engineers, and figuring out what needs to be added to make the greatest possible impact.
The only difference, he says, is that through the Gates Foundation, “our profit is lives saved, as opposed to a monetary measure.”
Bill Gates’ early life
Little would the skinny, often-bullied boy know the tremendous impact he would one day make in the world—both through his business and charitable ventures.
Born on Oct. 28, 1955 in Seattle, Gates’ first introduction to digital technology was in the form of a Teletype Model 33 ASR machine at his prep school, the Lakeside School. The rudimentary machine sent and received typed messages and was connected to a mainframe by a telephone line.
When he was 13, Gates wrote his first software program: A tic-tac-toe game that pitted the user against the computer. Noticing his talents, his math teacher allowed him to leave class to work on it.
Later, Gates and a group of friends, which included Paul Allen, Microsoft’s co-founder, started the Lakeside Programmers Club, where they studied different coding languages and, in return for free time on the computer terminal, helped to automate their school’s scheduling system.
Microsoft’s co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1984.
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Did Bill Gates go to college?
Gates received a near-perfect score on his SATs of 1590 out of 1600 and enrolled in Harvard University in 1973, although he famously would never graduate.
Gates took math and computer science classes and lived in Currier House, which is where he befriended Steve Ballmer, who would later lead Microsoft as CEO from 2000–2014.
In 1974, Paul Allen dropped out of Washington State University and moved to Boston, taking a job as a computer programmer with Honeywell.
One day, as Allen walked through Harvard Square he saw an Altair 8080 computer on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine — it would become a pivotal moment for the two. Allen bought the magazine and raced to Gates’ dorm room. Both knew that the time was nigh to develop their software ideas.
Together, they sent a letter to the MITS, the computer’s manufacturer, offering their consulting services to write software using the BASIC programming language. MITS responded favorably; Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard, and they packed up and moved to Albuquerque, where the company was located. In the process they founded Micro-Soft, and the rest, as they say, is history.