Bill Gates has been one of the 10 richest people in the world for decades. However, recently the Gates fortune has fallen several places on the list of millionaires, according to Forbes.
That fall in the estimation of his fortune It is not because the founder of Microsoft has made a mistake in his latest investments, but because of a plan that he has been executing for more than two decades. Donate 99% of your fortune through the foundation which he created with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates. This foundation has already donated 100 billion dollars.
Your fortune will not be your legacy. That of Bill Gates is only one of the best-known cases of billionaires who have made the decision to do not leave the fortune who have amassed their children throughout their lives. He veteran investor Warren Buffett, Mark ZuckerbergMick Jagger, Lauren Powell Jobs and the singer Sting have also declared their refusal to leave his empire as an inheritance to their children.
In one recent interview for the BBC on the occasion of the presentation of his latest book Source Code: My Beginningsthe millionaire recognized that he was not going to leave his fortune as an inheritance. Despite leaving them only a small percentage of his fortune, now estimated at about $103.9 billion, the millionaire assures that your children will not be poor. “They won’t be,” Gates said. “In absolute terms, they will do well, but in percentage terms it is not a gigantic number.” Indeed, 1% of something doesn’t seem like a big deal, but 1% of 103.9 billion is 1.03 billion dollars. A not inconsiderable inheritance.
100 billion dollars. According to what the millionaire told the BBC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was facing the 25th anniversary of its founding, reaching a round figure: 110.9 billion dollars. donated to projects philanthropists from around the world. “We have donated more than 100 billion,” Gates noted, “but I still have more to give.”
Currently, the millionaire’s donations to the foundation that bears his name exceed 63.9 billion. The remaining 40,000 million have come from periodic donations from third parties, such as those of his friend Warren Buffett, who every year allocates several billion dollars to the foundation.
What the Gates Foundation declares. According to the latest data made public By the Gates Foundation, as of the fourth quarter of 2025, the foundation had donated $90 billion and had a trust capital of $110.9 billion.
Of those $90 billion that the Gates Foundation claimed to have donated from its creation until 20235, $63.9 billion had come from Gates’ coffers. Buffett’s contribution since he began collaborating with the Gates Foundation in 2006 has been $47.9 billion. From these figures, and in the absence of the Foundation publishing its 2026 accounts, it is clear that, in reality, Bill Gates would have barely contributed 500 million more to his foundation during the last year, while his fortune has remained stable during the last year.
The responsibility of wealth. The founder of Microsoft claimed in his interview to have been greatly influenced by the philanthropy that his parents had exercised throughout his childhood. His mother often told him that “with wealth comes the responsibility of giving it away.”
Bill Gates, inspired by his parents and by Philosophy of Chuck Feeneydecided to join forces with Warren Buffett to found the initiative The Giving Pledgein which several dozen millionaires have committed to donate at least 50% of his fortune to philanthropic purposes.
Names like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, MacKenzie Scott or, the last to sign his commitment, Sam Altman, form part of this select club who believes that getting rich must be accompanied by a commitment to society that has allowed them to achieve it.
A version of this article was published in February 2025.
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