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Bill Gates and Melinda Gates split after 27 years
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife of 27 years Melinda Gates said in a statement on Monday that they intended to end their marriage.
null - Nearly two decades ago, starting in 1990, Bill Gates ranked as either the richest or second-richest person on the annual Forbes 400 list of America’s wealthiest people.
Now, Gates can no longer count himself among the 10 wealthiest billionaires in the world, Forbes reported Tuesday.
Though Gates still has a massive fortune of $107 billion, his rank on the Forbes list fell to No. 12 this year among all billionaires globally. This is the first time he’s fallen out of the world’s top ten richest people since 1991.
In the U.S., he ranked No. 9 – down from the sixth spot just one year ago.
FILE: Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Credit: Justin Tallis - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
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A big reason for the drop was Gates' 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates, his wife of 27 years. The news outlet also said his philanthropic efforts played a role, as well.
The then-couple created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together more than two decades ago. French Gates exited the organization this summer to pursue her own philanthropic efforts.
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According to the Associated Press, Gates gave $12.5 billion to French Gates to use for charitable purposes when she left. In June, she pledged to give $1 billion over the next two years to organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world.
Gates recently indicated on an episode of his Netflix series "What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates" that it was a "strange thing" to "have people worth a billion, 10 billion, a hundred billion" and indicated that he thought the world would be better off if billionaires "voluntarily chose to give more money away."