Quick Facts of
- First NameBill Gates
- Net Worth$ 134 billion
- Career American businessman, software developer, investor, philanthropist, founder
Bill Gates is an American businessman, software developer, investor, and philanthropist who is popular as the founder of Microsoft Corporation. He has held the position of CEO, Chairman, President, and Chief Software Architect for the company.
Besides being a billionaire, he has also donated millions to society through his charitable organization Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he founded along with his wife, Melinda Gates.
What Is Bill Gates’ Net Worth?
The world’s topmost businessman, Bill Gates has an estimated net worth of $134 billion, which he earned all from his company Microsoft.
He was listed as a billionaire in Forbes 1987’s list of 400 richest people in America and at the time he was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire with a fortune of $1.25 billion.
Bill’s company Microsoft sold the operating system PC DOS to IBM in 1996 for a one-time fee of $50,000.
In 2013, Gates Was The Highest-earning Billionaire
In 2013 as per the records of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bill was the highest-earning billionaire whose earnings for the year were $15.8 billion and helped him own a fortune of $78.5 billion.
Over the years he has invested in several stocks and assets including launching Breakthrough Energy, a $1 billion investment fund.
Bill’s House: He Resides In Xanadu 2.0 Worth $125 Million
Bill Gates and his family of four reside in Xanadu 2.0, a mansion opposite to Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
The 66,000-square-foot (6,100-meter square) was bought by the billionaire in 1988 for $2 million. He spent $63 million over seven years to renovate the property.
The house is equipped with computer screens that are worth more than $80,000. There are devices worth $150,000 that can display several paintings and photographs in a single touch.
Xanadu is also decorated with real paintings like the Winslow Homer painting which Gates bought in 1988 for $36 million. He also bought Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscript for $30 million at an auction in 1994.
The mansion is now valued at $125 million.
Owns a Mansion In Wellington, Florida
He also owns a 12,864-square-foot mansion in a 4.5-acre ranch in Wellington, Florida which he purchased for $21 million and is currently valued at $55 million.
His California Ranch Is Worth $18 Million
In 2009, he purchased a 492-acre Wyoming ranch and a 228-acre Rancho Pasadena, California in 2009 which he bought for $8.9 million and $18 million.
He Owns Private Island and Several Hotels
Bill Gates owns a private island called Grand Bogue Caye in Belize whose value is now estimated to be $25 million.
He is the shareholder of Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and owns almost half of the Four Season Holding’s chain hotels which are located in Atlanta and Houston.
In 2013, Bill and several anonymous buyers paid $161 million for the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Fransisco. In 2014, the hotel was said to be worth $200 million.
Bill’s Love for Cars and Plane
Gates is an avid car lover and his garage house a collection of luxury cars like a Porches 930 Turbo of $190,700, Porsche 911 Carrera which costs $91,000 and a rare edition Porsche 959 Coupe which can be bought for $2 million.
He also rides a Jaguar XJ6 of market price $76,000, Ferrari 348 of base price $59800, and a Ford Focus of $14,500.
Besides his luxury cars, he flies around in a Bombardier BD Global Express, a jet plane for which he paid $40 million.
Vacation And Excursions
Bill Gates and his family went on a vacation to the Mediterranean for which he chartered a 439-foot superyacht named Serene. The weekly lease for the cruise was $5 million and included a helicopter.
He has been to Australia, Croatia, Belize, and the Amazon in Brazil.
Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation
Melinda and Bill collaborated with three other family foundations in 2000 and donated Microsoft’s stock worth of $5 billion to found Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which became known as the wealthiest charitable foundation of 2013. The assets of the organization were valued at more than $34.6 billion at the time.
In 1999, the foundation established the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Program, an academic scholarship award for the unprivileged which started with a $1 billion grant from Bill Gates. The scholarship has paid for the tuition fees, books, and housing of 20,000 students which amounts to $614 million.
The charitable body donated $20 million for a new wing at the Carnegie Mellon University which commenced in 2009 and was named Gates Center for Computer Science.
In 2012, Melinda Gates pledged to donate $560 million for providing contraceptives to women in third-world countries. She also donated $10 million to Ursuline Academy of Dallas where she had studied.
Protests were made against Bill Gates in 2014 in Vancouver when he decided to contribute $50 million to UNAIDS via his organization for mass circumcision in Swaziland and Zambia.
They joined hands with Dangote Foundation in 2016 to provide $100 million to eliminate malnutrition in Nigeria. The charitable organization pledged $2 billion to fight malaria, $50 million to eradicate Ebola, and $38 million to pharmacy companies in Japan to produce cheap polio vaccines.
In June 2018, the organization donated $7 million for the eradication of malaria in the Caribbean and Meso-America. Through the foundation and UNICEF, Bill distributed $600,000 on 25th August 2018 to the victims of the Kerala flood.
In 2018 alone the foundation donated over $5 million to various sectors over the world.
In 2019, Bill’s wife promised to donate $1 billion over the course of ten years in order to promote gender equality.
As of 2019, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given away $40 billion in the name of charity.
Charity & Personal Giveaways
Gates personally donated $20 million in 1999 to build a computer laboratory named William H. Gates Building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was the first personal donation that Gates had given.
He donated $6 million for erecting the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University. The building was completed in January 1996.
In 2007 Bill Gates and his wife were listed as the second-most generous charitable couple in America having contributed $28 billion to humanity and the pair plan to eventually give away 95% of their earnings to charity.
Melinda, Bill, and Warren Buffet met on 9th December 2010 to sign a petition called Giving Pledge which stated that the three would give away half of their accumulated wealth over the course of time to charity.
Bill announced in November 2017 that he would be giving $50 million to Dementia Discovery Fund, which aims to find the cure for Alzheimer’s disease. He further promised to donate an additional $30 million to any start-up ventures that work in the field of Alzheimer’s research.
Bill Gates and Roger Federer’s Contribution
Bill partnered with world tennis champion Roger Federer to play in a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle on 29th April 2017. In the Match for Africa 4, the duo competed against tennis player John Isner and lead guitarist of Pearl Jam, Mike McCready.
Gates and Federer won the match 6 to 4 and helped raise $2 million for the children in Africa.
The following year on 5th March 2018, the duo came back to play in the Match for Africa 5 against Jack Sock and NBC‘s Savannah Guthrie. They claimed victory with a score of 6-3 and raised $2.5 million.
He is a Responsible Taxpayer
Back in 2017, Gates paid $1.041 million for Xanadu 2.0 in property taxes. He must also be paying huge lumps of money as taxes for his massive net worth.
Bill Gates: Short Biography
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a businesswoman who served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem. His ancestry includes German, English, and Irish/Scottish.
Gates married Melinda French Gates on 1 January 1994 on a golf course on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. The couple first in 1987 after, Melinda joined as the product manager of Microsoft. Gates approached her, and both of them started dating.
The then 23 years old Melinda French and then 32 years Bill Gates dated for seven years before their marriage.
The couple has three children; daughters Phoebe Adele Gates and Jennifer Katharine Gates and a son Rory John Gates.
