Early Life

William Henry Gates III (Bill Gates) was born on October 28 1955 in Seattle, Washington. William Henry Gates III had a time when he was a kid. People picked on him. He did not like that. So William Henry Gates III liked to stay in his room. His mother would ask him what he was doing. He would say “I am thinking”. When William Henry Gates III was 13 years old he went to a school called Lakeside prep school. That is where William Henry Gates III wrote his first software program. Bill Gates was in the grade when he first started at Lakeside. The schools Mothers Club did a fundraiser. They used the money to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and some time on a GE computer for the students at Lakeside.

Bill Gates really liked programming the GE computer using BASIC. He wrote his computer program which was a game of tic-tac-toe, on the GE computer. In this game of tic-tac-toe the players played against the GE computer. Bill Gates liked the GE computer. He liked programming the GE computer in BASIC. So Gates and his friends like Paul Allen, Ric Weiland and Kent Evans got in trouble at school. They were not allowed to use the school computer. This happened because they found some mistakes, in the computer system and used them to get time on the computer for free.

The four students, Gates and his friends started something called the Lakeside Programmers Club. They did this to make some money. Gates and his friends, including Paul Allen, Ric Weiland and Kent Evans were trying to find a way to earn money so they started the Lakeside Programmers Club.

When the ban on the boys was finally over the boys said they would look for bugs in the software. This was a deal they made to get time on the computer. Bill Gates started to study the code for the programs that the computer used. He looked at Fortran, Lisp and machine language.

In the year 1971 a teacher at Lakeside asked Bill Gates and his friend to make the schools class scheduling system automatic. So Bill Gates and his friend wrote the software. But Bill Gates did something he changed the code so that he would be in classes with more girls that he thought were interesting. He wanted to be in classes, with a lot of girls. Gates and Evans really wanted to get the new system working by the time they were seniors.. Something terrible happened at the end of their junior year. Evans died in a mountain climbing accident. Gates then asked Allen to help him finish the project for Lakeside. Gates and Allen worked on the system for Lakeside. They wanted to make sure it was ready, for when Gates was a senior.

Bill Gates was, in his year of school when he and Paul Allen started a company called Traf-O-Data. They used the Intel 8008 processor to make traffic counters. Bill Gates finished school at Lakeside School in 1973. Then he went to Harvard in the fall of 1973. At Harvard Bill Gates took classes in math and computer science that were really hard. That is where he met Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates did not finish college he left at the end of his year.

Bio & Social Media

Full Name	William Henry Gates III
Screen Name	Bill Gates
Date of Birth	October 28, 1955
Age	69 Years
Birth Place	USA
Residence	USA
Country	USA
Profession	Business Man, Investor
Father	William Henry Gates II
Mother	Mary Gates
Nationality	USA
Social Media	Instagram: Bill Gates 12.1M+ Followers Facebook Page: Bill Gates 41.4M+ Followers Twitter: Bill Gates 66.2M+ Followers YouTube Channel: Bill Gates 3.8M+ Subscribers Threads: Bill Gates 2.6M+ Followers Website: Bill Gates LinkedIn: Bill Gates 39.1M+ Followers
Spouse	Melinda French Gates (1994–2021)
Siblings	Libby Gates MacPhee, Kristi Gates
Children	Jennifer Gates, Phoebe Adele Gates, Rory John Gates
Grandchildren	Leila and Mia
Net Worth	$114B USD
Category	Business Man, Investor

Personal Life

In 1987 Melinda French started working at Microsoft in the part of the company that makes products. One time Melinda French and Bill sat next to each other at a dinner, for work. They really liked each other. Soon Bill was calling Melinda French to ask if she wanted to go out with him. Melinda French did a job at Microsoft and became the General Manager of Information Products. Melinda French worked at Microsoft until 1996.

Bill and Melinda got married on a golf course. This golf course was, on the island of Lanai. They picked January 1 1994 as their day. Bill and Melinda have kids. They have three kids. The kids are Phoebe Adele, Rory John and Jennifer Katharine. Bill and Melinda love their kids.

Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester, which’s a bunch of scientific papers written by Leonardo da Vinci for a lot of money thirty million eight hundred thousand dollars at an auction that happened in the year nineteen ninety four. The Codex Leicester is really important because it has the thoughts and ideas of Leonardo da Vinci on science. Bill Gates paid thirty point eight million dollars, for the Codex Leicester.

Bill Gates and his wife decided to put three family foundations to make the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the year 2000. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a charity that people can see what is going on with their money. It is the charity, in the world that does this.

On December 9 2010 Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett each signed the Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is a promise that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett made to give away at half of their money to charity over time. Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett want to use the Giving Pledge to help people in need. They believe that the Giving Pledge will make a difference, in the world. The Giving Pledge is a commitment that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett have made to charity.

Key Facts

• The net worth of this person reached an amount of money it was over $350 million, when Microsoft had its first public offering in 1986. This was a big deal, for Microsoft. The net worth was very high because of what happened with Microsoft. Microsoft going public was a moment and it changed things for this persons net worth.
• The person first became a billionaire in 1987. At that time the billionaire was 31 years old. The billionaire was very young when the billionaire became a billionaire.
• His net worth in 1999 was $100 billion. That is like having $153 billion today. When you think about it his net worth has not really changed much. His 1999 net worth is the same, as $153 billion today after you adjust for inflation. So his net worth is still $100 billion. That would be $153 billion now.
• This person would have a lot of money one hundred and seventy five billion dollars if they had not given any money to people in need.
• The money this person has is still a lot. It would be even more one hundred and seventy five billion dollars if they had kept all of it and not donated to charity.
• This person is very rich. Donates to charity, which is a good thing but it is interesting to think about how much money they would have, one hundred and seventy five billion dollars if they had never given any money away.
• The Seattle mansion that he owns has a big home. It is 66,000 feet. The Seattle mansion is worth a lot of money. The value of the Seattle mansion is $147 million.
• Microsoft has paid out a lot of money to its shareholders. The company has given out than $50 billion, in dividends from Microsoft since the year 2003. This is an amount of money that people have earned from Microsoft. They have been getting this money from Microsoft for a time now and it is still coming from Microsoft.
• The person owns a part of Microsoft it is about 1.3 percent of Microsoft today. They have a share of Microsoft. This share is 1.3 percent of the whole Microsoft company.
• This person wants to give away all of his money to charity when he passes away. He is talking about giving 99.96 percent of his wealth to charity. The person intends to donate this amount of money from his wealth to charity by the time he dies. He really wants to make sure that his wealth goes to charity when he is no longer alive. This person is very serious, about giving his wealth to charity.
• He is going to leave each of his three kids ten million dollars. This is what people are saying. The man reportedly has a lot of money. His three children will each get ten million dollars from him. It seems like an amount of money for his kids to get from him considering how rich he is. His three children will still get ten million dollars each.

Microsoft

The MITS Altair 8800 came out. It used the Intel 8080 CPU. This was the chance that Gates and Paul Allen were waiting for to start their computer software company. The people who made the MITS Altair 8800 which’s Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems worked with Gates and Allen. They used the Altair emulator that worked on a minicomputer and the BASIC interpreter that Gates and Allen made.

The company name Microsoft was officially registered on November 26 1976. Gates and Allen were really excited, about Microsoft. They wanted it to be a big success. They worked hard to make Microsoft a great computer software company. The MITS Altair 8800 and Microsoft didn’t exist without the Intel 8080 CPU and the work of Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft was a new company, for the first five years. During that time Bill Gates went over every line of code that Microsoft sent out. He even changed the code when it was necessary.

On November 20 1985 Microsoft came out with its version of Microsoft Windows that people could buy in stores.

Microsoft went public in 1986. The stock price when it first started trading was twenty one dollars. At the end of the trading day Microsoft stock closed at twenty seven dollars. Seventy five cents. Bill Gates owned forty five percent of Microsoft. That was worth three hundred and fifty million dollars. This was a big deal, for Microsoft. Than a year later Microsoft stock went way up and Bill Gates became a billionaire. Bill Gates was thirty one years old when this happened to Microsoft.

Bill Gates announced on June 15 2006 that he would be leaving his work at Microsoft. He wanted to do this over the two years. Bill Gates wanted to dedicate time to philanthropy which is something that Bill Gates really cares about philanthropy.

On March 13 2020 Bill Gates said that he is going to leave his job as the Chairman of Microsoft.

Cascade Investments

Bill has made a lot of money over the years. He has gotten than fifty billion dollars from the companies he owns stock in and from selling stock. Bill has used this money to put into Cascade Investment, which’s his own company that invests in other things.

Today Cascade Investment has, than two hundred billion dollars that it is investing for people. Cascade Investment has put this money into different things so it is not taking a big risk. Some of the things that Cascade Investment has put money into include:

• Farmland: Cascade Investment owns a lot of land in the United States. They have 269,000 acres of farmland. They own all this land through companies that they control. This is an investment because it does well when the stock market does not. The stock market and Cascade Investments farmland business are like opposites. When the stock market is doing badly Cascade Investments farmland is doing well. Cascade Investment is the owner of farmland, in the United States. They have a lot of farmland.
• Technology Stocks are a part of Cascade: They have a lot of money invested in technology companies. The biggest investments that Cascade has are in Apple Inc. And Microsoft. Cascade really likes Technology Stocks. Has a lot of faith in them which is why they have so much money in Technology Stocks, like Apple Inc. And Microsoft.
• Cascade Investment has some equity holdings: The company has money in big names.
• Cascade Investment owns a lot of Canadian National Railway.
• They also have a lot of Republic Services, which’s a company that removes waste.
• Cascade Investment has a lot of Ecolab too. This company makes disinfectants.
• They also own a lot of Femsa, which’s a company that makes drinks.
• Cascade Investment has money in some companies but these are not mentioned by name.
• One thing is clear Cascade Investment has a lot of equity holdings, in these companies including Canadian National Railway and Republic Services and Ecolab and Femsa.
• Berkshire Hathaway is really important to Cascade. In fact Berkshire Hathaway makes up, than 50 percent of what Cascade has.
• Berkshire Hathaway is a company that owns a lot of businesses. These businesses do things like insurance and energy and retail. Berkshire Hathaway has a lot of parts to it. Cascade has a lot invested in Berkshire Hathaway.
• The company has an investment in Waste Management Waste Management is a company that helps get rid of waste and takes care of the environment. They do a lot of things to make sure waste does not hurt the earth. Waste Management is very important to the company. It is their second largest investment. The company thinks Waste Management is a choice because they do a lot of good things for the environment and, for people. Waste Management is a part of what the company does.
• Four Seasons: So this is what happened. Bill and Cascade started working with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2007. They all shared the ownership of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Each of them had around half of the share. Together they controlled about 70 percent of the company.

Then in September 2021 Bill and Cascade bought the share that belonged to Prince Alwaleed. They paid him $2.21 billion for it. After this deal Cascade owned 71.3 percent of Four Seasons. The value of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts became $10 billion. Four Seasons is a hospitality brand and this deal was a big move for Bill and Cascade. They now have a lot of control, over Four Seasons.

Bill Gates’ Incredible Seattle Mansion

Bill Gates has a lot of nice houses in the United States. Bill Gates probably has houses, in countries too but not much is known about the houses he owns outside of the US.

In Washington Bill Gates has a cool house called “Xanadu 2.0”. This house is very special. Bill Gates bought the land by the lake in 1988 for $2 million. Then Bill Gates spent a lot of time seven years and a lot of money $63 million building Bill Gates house. It is one of the houses in the world. Bill Gates also bought the houses, next door for $14 million so Bill Gates could have privacy at Bill Gates house.

The house is a cool Pacific lodge style design. It has a lot of things and high-tech stuff too. When they built Xanadu 2.0 they made sure all the wood was perfect and the sound was great. They used than seven kinds of stone to make it look nice. The floors are heated, the walkways and the driveway. That is really nice on days. It took a lot of people to finish the house there were 300 workers in total. One hundred of them were electricians, which is a lot of electricians. Xanadu 2.0 has a lot of things, like the Pacific lodge style design and the heated floors.

The house is, on a hill that looks out over Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. It is really big. The main house is 66,000 feet.

The place has a lot of things. There is a swimming pool that’s 60 feet long and it has music that you can hear underwater.

There is also a gym that is 2,500 square feet and a dining room that is 1,000 square feet.

The house has six kitchens and a big room where you can eat with a lot of people. It can seat 200 people.

This big room has an amazing wall. It is made up of 24 big video screens that are 40 inches each. They all come together to make one giant picture. The Lake Washington estate has all these things and more. This man also has a dining room that is one thousand square feet. The dining room can fit twenty four people. It is a cozy place because it has a fireplace. People can sit by the fireplace in the dining room. The dining room is really nice for having dinner with a group of people, like twenty four people. It has a fireplace.

This house has lots of technology. It has over 52 miles of cables that help everything work together. When people come to visit they get a microchip tag. The microchip tag can change the settings in each room they go into. It can make the lights brighter or dimmer make the room warmer or cooler play their music and even show their favorite art on the screens.

Each room in the house also has its special touchpad. The touchpad lets people control everything in the room. They can use the touchpad to change the lighting, the heating, the music and the art, on the displays. The house automation and the microchip tag make it really easy for family members and visitors to get comfortable in each room.

The home security system is really strong with cameras and floor sensors all over the place. You will not see any outlets anywhere. Every single door handle in the house was made special. It cost two thousand dollars for each one. Some of the doors inside the house that lead to passageways are extremely heavy they weigh more, than eight hundred pounds but the good thing is that they are balanced so they are easy to open.

There are also two garages above the ground, at Bill Gates house. Gates really loves to read. The ceiling of his home library has a quote from The Great Gatsby on it. His library is full of valuable books, including some things made by Da Vinci. The property taxes, on Gates big house are one million sixty three thousand dollars every year. This is because his house is worth one hundred and fifty million dollars.

Real Estate

Rancho Santa Fe, CA: The Gates family bought a big ranch in Rancho Santa Fe, California back in October 2014. They paid eighteen million dollars for this place that sits on two hundred and twenty eight acres of land. It is near San Diego. The Gates family got the ranch from Jenny Craig, who made a lot of money from her weight loss business. The Gates family calls this ranch “Rancho Paseana”. It is a place where they have horses. Jennifer Gates, who is the daughter of the Gates family loves to ride horses. The ranch has a track where horses can run a place where they grow fruit five buildings for the horses and even a special room, for a veterinarian who takes care of the horses all the time.

Del Mar, CA: Back in April 2020 Bill and Melinda bought a beautiful house that is right on the ocean in Del Mar, California. This house is 15 minutes away from their other home, in Rancho Santa Fe. They paid 43 million dollars for it. The person they bought it from was the wife of a man named T. Boone Pickens. He was a rich man who made his money from oil and investing. Bill and Melinda bought the mansion from his widow.

Wellington Florida is a nice place. In the year 2013 Gates bought a horse ranch in Wellington, Florida for 8.7 million dollars. This was his horse ranch. The Gates family used to rent a house in Wellington, Florida when they were in town for Jennifer Gates horse competitions. They liked the house a lot. So they decided to buy the house. The house, in Wellington Florida was a place for Jennifer Gates to stay when she had competitions. Gates and his family loved the house. That is why they bought it.

Cody, WY: Back in 2009 Bill Gates purchased a big ranch in Cody, Wyoming. This ranch is huge it covers 492 acres. Bill Gates bought the Cody ranch for a price that was not made public. The Cody ranch used to belong to William Buffalo Bill Cody. At first the Cody ranch was on the market, for 12 million dollars. But right before Bill Gates bought the Cody ranch the price was lower it was 8.9 million dollars. The Cody ranch has only been owned by three people in 150 years. Bill Gates is now one of the owners of the Cody ranch.

Commercial Properties: Bill Gates has investments in hotels through his fund called Cascade. The Charles Hotel in Cambridge Massachusetts is one of the hotels that Bill Gates owns a part of. Bill Gates also owns a part of the Four Seasons hotels all around the world. In fact Bill Gates owns about half of all the Four Seasons hotels. Bill Gates and some other investors together own the Ritz-Carlton hotel, in San Francisco.

Net Worth

Bill Gates is a rich man, from America. He started his company and wrote some books. He also helps people in need. Bill Gates has a lot of money $117 billion to be exact. You might think that most of his money comes from the company he started with someone Microsoft.. That is not true. Bill Gates only has 103 million shares of Microsoft now. If each share is worth $370 then the Microsoft shares are worth $38 billion of Bill Gates money. The rest of Bills money over one hundred billion dollars is from the different things he has invested in. These things are mostly controlled by Cascade Investments, which’s like a company that handles all of his investments. We will talk more about Cascade Investments later in this article.. Basically Cascade Investments is how Bill owns most of Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts. He also owns a lot of farmland in the United States more than any private person. Bills company Cascade Investments is really important for all of the things that Bill owns, like Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts and the farmland.

When Microsoft went public in 1986 Bill owned a part of Microsoft about 45 percent of the company. Steve Ballmer had 8 percent of Microsoft and Paul Allen had 25 percent of Microsoft. Over time Bill sold some of his Microsoft shares so by 2000 he only had 14 percent of Microsoft.

Today Bill owns a small part of Microsoft less, than 1.4 percent of Microsoft, which is around 103 million Microsoft shares. This means Bill is not the person who owns the Microsoft shares. The person who owns the Microsoft shares is actually Steve Ballmer, who took over after Bill and he owns around 4 percent of Microsoft today. I want to tell you about the money that Bill gets from Microsoft. Microsoft pays a dividend of $3 every year. Because of this Bill gets $309 million every year. This is a lot of money. Ballmer also gets a lot of money $1 billion every year, from Microsoft. Bill and Ballmer get this money because they own a lot of Microsoft shares.

Bill has gotten a lot of money from Microsoft and other things he has invested in. He has gotten sixty billion dollars from selling stocks and getting dividends. He has used this money to fund a company called Cascade Investment LLC. This company is like a way for Bill to invest in companies. He has invested in a lot of things including a lot of land in the United States around 270,000 acres. He also has a lot of stock in companies like Apple and Canadian National Railway. Bill has stock in companies too such, as Republic Services and Ecolab and Waste Management and Berkshire Hathaway. Cascade Investment LLC also owns the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

Bill was the person in the world for a long time from 1997 to 2008. He was number one without anyone taking his place. Then Bill and Carlos Slim kept switching places for a years. After that Bill was the person in the world again without anyone taking his place until July 2017. That is when Jeff Bezos, the person who started Amazon became the person in the world. For the ten years Bill has been one of the five richest people, in the world. Bill is still very rich.

Microsoft started with two friends, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who had known each other since they were kids in school. They talked their way into a meeting with the people at MITS, the company that made the Altair 8800 computer. Microsoft and the Altair 8800 computer were about to become very important. Bill Gates and Paul Allen told MITS that they should work together to sell their version of the computer language, which is called Microsoft BASIC.

MITS agreed to do this. In 1975 they started selling the Altair BASIC, which was a big success. This was a start, for Bill Gates and Paul Allen and they were able to use this success to start their own company, which they called Microsoft. Microsoft was going to be a deal and it all began with the Altair 8800 computer and Microsoft BASIC. By 1977 Microsoft had their international office in Japan and they moved their office in the United States to the state of Washington. In 1980 Microsoft won a contract to make an operating system, for IBM and this is when Microsoft created MS-DOS. Microsoft did well from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s and Microsoft became a big name in technology. When Microsoft went public in 1986 something cool happened to the people who worked at Microsoft. 12,000 Employees of Microsoft became millionaires and four employees of Microsoft became billionaires. Microsoft was also hit with a lot of lawsuits around this time because of the way they did business. It seemed like they were trying to control the computer market.

In the middle of the 1990s Microsoft started making products, including things that helped computers talk to each other and things that worked with the World Wide Web. One of these products was a browser called Internet Explorer.

In the year 2000 Bill Gates stopped being the CEO of Microsoft and Steve Ballmer took his place. Steve Ballmer had been working at Microsoft for a time.

Net Worth Over Time

1986 – $350 million

In March 1986 Microsoft had its public stock sale. When the first day of trading was over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates owned forty five percent of Microsoft the company he started eleven years before that. This made the net worth of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates three hundred and fifty million dollars.

1987 – $1.25 billion

Bill Gates became the billionaire in the world by himself in 1987. This happened because people were getting really excited about software and that made the price of Microsoft stock go up. Bill Gates and Microsoft were doing well at that time because of this excitement, for the software industry.

1990 – $2.5 billion

In 1990 Microsoft came out with Windows 3.0. By the end of that year two million copies of Windows 3.0 had been shipped. This was a deal for Microsoft. Microsoft became the company that made software for personal computers to make, over one billion dollars in a year. This is the year that Bill said his plan was to put Windows to have Windows on every computer.

1995 – $14.8 billion

In the 90s the money that Bill Gates had was getting bigger and bigger as Microsofts stock price was going up. Microsoft came out with Windows 95. This thing was really popular. It sold, over one million copies in four days. People really liked Windows 95. Microsoft was doing well because of Windows 95.

1997 – $39.8 billion

Bill Gates net worth became a lot more in 1996. Now Bill Gates is the man in the world. He has nineteen billion dollars more than Bill Gates friend Warren Buffett who’s the second richest man, in the world.

1999 – $85 billion

The tech stock craze is really going wild. It is making Bill a lot of money. His net worth is now $85 billion. This is a jump from last year he has made more than $25 billion. To put that in perspective that is $3 million every single hour. I remember one time back in 1999 Bills net worth was higher than $100 billion, for a little while.

2000 – $63 billion

The year 2000 was a deal for Microsoft and for Bill Gates. This was the year that Bill Gates saw his money go down a lot. What happened was that the tech bubble burst and Microsoft had to deal with some lawsuits. These lawsuits were really bad, for Microsofts stock price. Because of all this Bill Gates decided to step down as the boss of Microsoft. Then Steve Ballmer became the boss of Microsoft. Bill Gates was not the CEO anymore Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft now.

2008 – $58 billion

2008 marked the first time in 13 years that Gates was not the richest person. He slipped to the third spot behind Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helu. Gates chose to stop working full-time at Microsoft so that he could devote more time to charity.

• 2009 – $40 billion
• 2010 – $53 billion
• 2011 – $63.4 billion
• 2014 – $76 billion
• 2020 – $110 billion
• 2023 – $138 billion
• 2024 – $156 billion
• 2025 – $120 billion

Bill Gates Net Worth Milestones:
1986	$350 million
1987	$1.25 billion
1990	$2.5 billion
1990	$15 billion
1997	$40 billion
1999	$85 billion
2000	$63 billion
2008	$58 billion
2009	$40 billion
2014	$76 billion
2020	$130 billion
2021	$145 billion
2022	$118 billion
2023	$138 billion
2023	$154 billion
2024	$154 billion
2025	$120 billion

*** At one very brief point in 1999, his net worth topped $100 billion. After adjusting for inflation, that was the same as being worth $153 billion today.