Bill Gates is an American business magnate and philanthropist best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, the software company he started in the 1970s. He led Microsoft for decades as it became the dominant maker of personal computer software, including Windows and Office, and for many years he was ranked as the world's richest person.
His father, Bill Gates Sr., born in 1925 in Bremerton, Washington, was a prominent attorney. Gates married Melinda French Gates in 1994; the couple had three children and divorced in 2021. Together they founded the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, one of the world's largest private charitable foundations, with a focus on global health, poverty reduction, and education. Melinda and Bill Gates co-chaired the foundation from 2000 to 2024.
Gates is a frequent public commentator on artificial intelligence and on global health and pandemic preparedness. His 2015 TED talk warning that the world was unprepared for the next major disease outbreak drew renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also published a memoir titled Source Code and is the subject of the Netflix documentary Inside Bill's Brain.
More recently, a news item circulating on social media reported that Gates told the U.S. House Oversight Committee, as part of its investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein, that Epstein had attempted to blackmail him over an extramarital affair. Gates also remains a recurring subject of online conspiracy theories—such as false claims linking him to surveillance technology or vaccines—which lack credible supporting evidence.
