Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is ranked No. 19 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $108 billion. Forbes ranked him the world’s richest person in 18 of the 24 years between 1995 and 2017.
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, and raised in Seattle, Washington. He was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Paul Allen. In 1973 he enrolled at Harvard University and dropped out in 1975 to co-found Microsoft.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 19, with $108 billion
- Later estimate: Forbes put his wealth at $106.5 billion in July 2026, according to Wikipedia
- Records: he became the world’s then-youngest billionaire in 1987 at age 31, and the first centibillionaire in 1999
Microsoft
Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen and was its CEO for 25 years, also serving as president and chairman after it was incorporated in 1981. Steve Ballmer succeeded him as CEO in 2000, when Gates became chief software architect. He stepped down as chairman in 2014 and resigned from the board in 2020; he is a technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella.
Philanthropy
- Gates Foundation: he and his then-wife Melinda French Gates co-chaired the foundation from 2000 to 2024, and he is now its sole chair; it focuses on health, education and poverty, including tuberculosis, malaria and polio
- Giving Pledge: in 2010 he and Warren Buffett founded the pledge, asking billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity
- Other ventures: Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures and Breakthrough Energy
Personal Life
Gates met Melinda French at Microsoft in 1987, and they married on January 1, 1994. They later divorced, and she left as co-chair of the foundation.
Why It Matters
Gates’s wealth has fallen in the rankings because he has been giving much of it away, while his foundation is the largest private charity in the world.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Bill Gates (right) with European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni in Brussels, July 2021. Photo: Lukasz Kobus / European Commission / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
