Everything you need to know about Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, is a legendary businessman in the IT world. Find out all that you need you know about the man who co-founded IT giant Microsoft.

Bill Gates, a business entrepreneur, software developer, investor, and philanthropist from the United States, was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 195. Some regard him as a visionary who began a computer revolution. Others regard him as a modern-day robber baron whose aggressive business practises have hampered competition in the software industry.

Regardless of his friends or detractors, few can deny that Bill Gates is one of, if not the, most successful entrepreneurs of the twentieth century. In just 25 years, he transformed a two-man enterprise into a multibillion-dollar behemoth and became the world's richest man.

Microsoft was co-founded by Gates and his late boyhood buddy and fellow student, Paul Allen.

During his tenure at Microsoft, Gates held the offices of chairman, CEO, president, and chief software architect, as well as being the company's largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a key figure in the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

After being launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft grew to become the world's largest PC software corporation. Gates headed Microsoft as chairman and CEO until he stepped down in January 2000. Gates was then followed as CEO by Steve Ballmer, while he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he was chastised for his business practises, which were deemed anti-competitive.

Numerous court judgements have supported this viewpoint. Gates left Microsoft in June 2008 to work part-time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private philanthropic foundation he and his then-wife, Melinda Gates, founded in 2000. In February 2014, he stood down as Microsoft's chairman of the board and took on a new role as a technology adviser to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Gates resigned from his roles on the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway in March 2020 to focus on his charitable initiatives, which include climate change, global health and development, and education.

Gates has been on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest people since 1987. Except for 2010 and 2013, he held the Forbes title of the world's richest person every year from 1995 to 2017. In October 2017, he was eclipsed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of $90.6 billion at the time, compared to Gates' net worth of $89.9 billion. Gates has an estimated net worth of US$139 billion as of January 2022, making him the world's fourth richest person.

Later in his career, and after leaving Microsoft's day-to-day operations in 2008, Gates has pursued a variety of corporate and philanthropic projects. He founded and serves as the chairman of many firms, including BEN, Cascade Investment, bgC3, and TerraPower.

He has made significant contributions to a variety of philanthropic organisations and scientific research initiatives through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is said to be the world's largest private charity. Through the organisation, he spearheaded a vaccination effort in the early twenty-first century that contributed considerably to the eradication of wild poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett established The Giving Pledge, in which they and other billionaires pledged to donate at least half of their fortune to charity.

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