Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to a family that included a prominent attorney father and a mother who served on bank and charity boards. He showed an early aptitude for computer programming at Seattle’s Lakeside School, where he met future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Gates enrolled at Harvard University in 1973 but left before graduating to pursue his software business full time. He was married to Melinda French Gates from 1994 until their divorce in 2021; the couple have three children.

Gates co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, initially developing software for early personal computers. The company’s fortunes were transformed by its 1980 deal to supply the operating system for IBM’s new personal computer line, which evolved into MS-DOS and later Windows. Microsoft’s 1986 initial public offering made Gates a multimillionaire almost overnight, and by the mid-1990s he had become the richest person in the world as Windows achieved near-universal adoption on personal computers.

Photo: Joi Ito from Inbamura, Japan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Gates served as Microsoft’s CEO until 2000, then as chairman and chief software architect, stepping back from day-to-day software leadership in 2008 to focus more on philanthropy while remaining chairman. He left the Microsoft board entirely in March 2020. Since the early 2000s his primary work has centered on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, focused on global health, poverty alleviation, and education, alongside his climate-focused investment fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Photo: DFID – UK Department for International Development via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Gates’s current income is driven almost entirely by returns on his vast investment portfolio rather than a salary, since he no longer holds an operating role at Microsoft. Forbes and Bloomberg track his net worth primarily through his remaining Microsoft shares (a small fraction of the company today compared with his peak ownership), and the diversified holdings of Cascade Investment, his personal investment company.

As Microsoft’s chairman and later chief software architect, Gates drew a modest executive salary by tech-industry standards, reportedly around $1 million annually in his final years at the company — a small fraction of his overall wealth, which has always been dominated by equity holdings and investment returns rather than salary income.

Gates does not pursue traditional celebrity-style endorsement deals. His public commercial association is almost entirely tied to Microsoft and, more recently, to public advocacy for causes supported by his foundation, such as vaccine access and climate technology, rather than paid commercial sponsorships.

Gates’s wealth today is managed largely through Cascade Investment, his private investment vehicle, which holds stakes in companies including Canadian National Railway and hospitality group Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts (with business partner Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal), along with a large and diversified portfolio of public equities. Gates is also widely reported to be the largest private owner of farmland in the United States, with holdings spanning multiple states. He co-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures to fund early-stage climate technology companies.

Gates’s primary residence is Xanadu 2.0, a roughly 66,000-square-foot estate on Lake Washington in Medina, Washington, reportedly worth well over $100 million and built with extensive custom technology. He also owns additional properties, including estates in California and Wyoming, and his farmland holdings across the U.S. represent a substantial share of his tangible assets outside of equities.