How much is Bill Gates Worth?
Bill Gates Net Worth:
$146 Billion
Bill Gates' Salary:
$1 Million
Bill Gates net
worth: Bill Gates is an American
business magnate, founder and former chairperson and CEO of Microsoft,
philanthropist, and author. Over much of the last 20 years, Bill Gates has been
the richest person in the world. He has been the second richest person in the
world since July 2017 when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos overtook him.
As of this writing, Bill Gates' net worth is $146 billion. As you probably know, Bill Gates co-founded the software company Microsoft with Paul Allen and is known as one of the pioneering entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Today he owns less than 1.3% of Microsoft. He has sold tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Microsoft shares over the years. The proceeds of his sales have funded Cascade Investment LLC, the vehicle Gates uses to invest in hundreds of other companies.
Early Life: William Henry Gates III was
born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Gates was bullied as a
child. He preferred to stay in his room where he would shout "I'm
thinking" when his mother asked what he was doing. When he was 13, he
enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school and he wrote his first
software program. He was in eighth grade during his first year at Lakeside and
the school's Mother's Club used proceeds from a fundraiser to buy a Teletype
Model 33 ASR terminal and time on a GE computer for the school's students.
Gates became interested in programming the GE computer in BASIC. He wrote his
first program — a tic-tac-toe game, on this computer. Players played the game
against the computer. Eventually, Gates and his friends Paul Allen, Ric
Weiland, and Kent Evans were banned from using the school's computer after they
were caught exploiting bugs in the operating system to get free time on the
machine. The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make
money.
When their ban was over, the boys offered to look
for bugs in the software, in exchange for extra time on the computer. Gates
began studying code to the programs that ran on the computer including FORTRAN,
Lisp, and machine language. In 1971, a Lakeside teacher asked Gates and Evans
to automate the school's class-scheduling system. The friends wrote software
with one twist–Gates changed the code so that he was in classes with a higher
number of interesting girls. Gates and Evans wanted to have the new system up
and running by senior year. Then, at the end of their junior year, Evans was
killed in a mountain climbing accident. Gates turned to Allen to help him
finish the project for Lakeside.
During their senior year, Gates and Allen formed a
company called Traf-O-Data and made traffic counters on the Intel 8008
processer. He graduated from Lakeside School in 1973 and enrolled at Harvard in
the fall of 1973. At Harvard, Gates took math and graduate-level computer
science classes. He met Steve Ballmer at Harvard. Gates dropped out of college
at the end of his sophomore year.
KEY FACTS
·
Net worth topped
$350m when Microsoft went public in 1986
·
First became a
billionaire in 1987. He was 31 years old
·
His 1999 net worth
of $100b is the same as $153b today after adjusting for inflation
·
Would be worth
$175b had he never donated a dollar to charity
·
His Seattle mansion
has a 66,000 square-foot home and an assessed value of $147 million
·
Has earned at least
$50 billion in Microsoft dividends since 2003
·
Owns approximately
1.3% of Microsoft today
·
Intends to give
99.96% of his wealth to charity by the time he dies
·
Reportedly plans to
leave each of his three children just $10 million
Career: With the release of the MITS Altair
8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, Gates and Paul Allen saw this as the opening
they needed to create their own computer software company. The creators of the
new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), formed a
partnership with Gates and Allen using their Altair emulator that ran on a
minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The trade name Microsoft was
registered on November 26, 1976. During the first five years of the Microsoft Company,
Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often-rewriting
code as needed. On November 20, 1985, Microsoft launched its first retail
version of Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft went public in 1986. The opening stock
price was $21. After the trading day, the stock closed at $27.75 and Bill's 45%
was worth $350 million. Less than a year later, after the stock surged, he was
a billionaire. He was 31 years old.
Gates announced on June 15, 2006, that he would
transition out of his day-to-day role at Microsoft over the next two years in
order to dedicate more time to philanthropy.
On March 13, 2020, Gates announced he would step down as Microsoft's Chairman. * At one very brief point in 1999, Gate’s net worth topped $100 billion. After adjusting for inflation, which was the same as being worth $153 billion today.
Personal
Life:
In 1987, MelindaFrench went to work in the product development division of Microsoft. At some
point, she and Bill were seated next to each other at a work dinner. They hit
it off and Bill was soon calling Melinda to ask her out. Melinda eventually
rose to the position of General Manager of Information Products. She stayed
with Microsoft until 1996.
Bill and Melinda married on a golf course on the
Hawaiian island of Lanai on January 1, 1994. They have three children; Phoebe
Adele, Rory John, and Jennifer Katharine.
Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection
of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for $30.8 million at an
auction in 1994.
Gates and his wife combined three family
foundations to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
2000, the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.
On December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and
investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the Giving Pledge,
which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth,
over the course of time, to charity.
Net worth
Details: Bill Gates has sold at least $40 billion in
Microsoft stock and collected over $12 billion in dividends since the company's
IPO in 1986. He used that money to create the holding company Cascade
Investment, which has continued to grow and includes investments in companies
such as Canadian National Railway and AutoNation. Gates is quite a
philanthropist and donated a $3.3 billion payout he received in 2004 to his
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He still has a 1.3 percent stake in
Microsoft.
Real Estate: Seattle,
WA- The Gates family
owns a number of impressive properties around the US. He likely owns residences
abroad as well, though less is known about these purchases.
In Washington, the Gates family resides in an
unbelievably amazing mansion nicknamed "Xanadu 2.0". After acquiring
the lakefront property in 1988 for $2 million, Bill spent seven years and $63
million constructing what became arguably the most impressive private residence
in the world.
Located on the side of a hill overlooking Lake
Washington in Medina, Washington, the main house alone is 66,000 square-feet.
The 66,000 square-foot estate has a 60-foot swimming pool with an underwater
music system, a 2,500 square-foot gym and a 1,000 square-foot dining room
six kitchens and a dining hall that can seat 200 people. Gates is an avid reader,
and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The
Great Gatsby. The library features priceless works, including pieces by Da
Vinci.
The annual property taxes on the mansion are
reported to be $1.063 million, on an assessed value of $150 million.
Rancho Santa Fe, CA: In October 2014, the Gates family
paid $18 million for a 228-acre ranch property in Rancho Santa Fe, California
(near San Diego). They acquired the property from weight loss tycoon Jenny
Craig. The property, dubbed "Rancho Paseana", is a horse ranch.
Gates' daughter Jennifer is an avid rider. The property has a racetrack,
orchard, five barns and even a suite for a full-time veterinarian.
Del Mar, CA: In April 2020, Bill and Melinda
paid $43 million for a stunning oceanfront mansion in Del Mar, California,
roughly 15 minutes from their Rancho Santa Fe ranch. They bought the home from
the widow of the late oil billionaire/investor T. Boone Pickens.
Wellington, FL: In 2013, Gates paid $8.7 million
for a second horse ranch, this one in Wellington, Florida. The family had
rented the mansion on several previous occasions when in town for Jennifer
Gates' competitions. They liked the house so much and they bought it.
Cody, WY: In 2009, Gates bought a 492-acre
ranch in Cody, Wyoming, for an undisclosed price. The ranch, once owned by
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, was initially listed for $12 million. It
was listed at $8.9 million just before Bill became the owner. The ranch has
only had three owners in roughly 150 years.
Commercial Properties: Through his investment fund
Cascade, Gates owns interests in several prominent hotels. He owns part of the
Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He owns around half of all Four
Seasons hotels around the world. He plus a group of investors own the Ritz
Carlton in San Francisco.
Summary: Bill Gates has a net worth of $146 billion. As of
this writing, that makes him the second richest person in the world behind
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Since Microsoft's 1986 IPO, Bill has seen his net
worth grow from $250 million to well over $100 billion. In 1999, at the peak of
the dotcom boom, Gates' fortune briefly topped $99 billion. After adjusting for
inflation, that is the same as around $153 billion in today's dollars.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment