Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has led by any measure a highly eventful life—but says no year was more “difficult” or “unusual” than 2021. The world’s No. 4 richest person (worth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=4a6148f0689f">nearly $139 billion</a>,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates) opened up about his personal struggles—including his headline-making divorce from Melinda French Gates—in a year-in-review post&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2021?WT.mc_id=20211207100000_YIR2021_BG-TW_&amp;WT.tsrc=BGTW" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;on Tuesday to his blog, GatesNotes.&nbsp;



The typically upbeat Gates struck a somber tone in his lengthy annual post, describing 2021 as “an incredibly hard year for many people, including me.” While admitting he’d rather focus on his work over the past year, Gates recognized the national curiosity around his divorce, which was announced suddenly in May after 27 years of marriage, and offered some insight into his feelings since.&nbsp;



“Melinda and I continue to run our foundation together and have found a good new working rhythm,” Gates wrote of the pair’s continued work with their nonprofit, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. “But I can’t deny that it’s been a year of great personal sadness for me. Adapting to change is never easy, no matter what it is.”&nbsp;



One of the biggest changes has been spending “stretches of time without any face-to-face interactions,” said Gates, describing himself as an “empty-nester” thanks to the departures of his two youngest children, Phoebe and Rory. His third child, Jenn, recently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2021/11/28/north-salem-billionaires-dirt-road-wes-edens-jamie-dinan-larry-fink-georgina-bloomberg-david-letterman-richard-gere-andmore/?sh=1c2f810e3bef">married</a>&nbsp;equestrian Nayel Nasser in an event Gates deemed “the highlight of [his] year.”&nbsp;



Though “the house is a lot quieter without a bunch of teenagers hanging around” and it’s easier to focus on doing work or reading a book (a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/11/22/these-are-bill-gates-5-favorite-books-of-2021/?sh=2fe79508bb7c">favorite hobby </a>of his), Gates said he misses having his children around. “It’s a strange and disorienting experience,” he wrote. “My personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last twelve months.” 



All in all, it was a year of “big transitions” for the Microsoft billionaire, but that was far from the only thing on his mind. Gates said he spent a lot of time thinking about the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, including what he fears to be a dangerous decline in people’s trust in public institutions, a trend he attributed in part to the lack of regulation of social media platforms and the spread of disinformation.&nbsp;



“Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done,” Gates wrote, adding that he is particularly concerned because of the need for governments to take action on challenges like avoiding a climate disaster or preventing the next pandemic. The billionaire, who is writing a book on pandemic preparedness, said this topic is the “biggest and most important thing I’m working on in 2022.”&nbsp;



On a more positive note, Gates expressed optimism and excitement about technological advancements sparked by the pandemic that he thinks have the potential to revolutionize healthcare, education and office work. For example, Gates said he expects most work meetings will be taking place within&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/11/03/zuckerberg-facebook-metaverse-meta-virtual-reality-oculus/?sh=50af824d6b69">the metaverse</a>&nbsp;using 3D digital avatars within the next two or three years.&nbsp;



&nbsp;“As unbelievable as it sounds, we’re only starting to see how digitization is going to change our lives,” he wrote. “There is so much potential for technology to create more flexibility and options for people.”&nbsp;



As for when coronavirus-related disruptions may end, Gates predicted the “acute phase” of the pandemic will come to a close “some time in 2022.” He recognized the newly emerging Omicron variant as “concerning,” but said “the world is better prepared to tackle potentially bad variants than at any other point in the pandemic so far.” In the future, Gates said he expects communities to see occasional outbreaks. However, “new drugs will be able to take care of most cases and hospitals will be able to handle the rest.”



By Jemima McEvoy, Forbes Staff

2019 New York Times Dealbook

Bill Gates Reflects On His Divorce, Being Alone During Covid And The ‘Most Difficult’ Year Of His Life

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?sh=7717ecda689f">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/melinda-gates/?sh=3f63649f7c2b">Melinda French Gates</a>&nbsp;are already divvying up their massive fortune, and in the process, Melinda has become a billionaire on her own.



Bill’s investment vehicle, Cascade Investment, transferred nearly $2.4 billion in securities to Melinda on Monday, May 3, the same day the pair announced their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissaholzberg/2021/05/03/bill-and-melinda-gates-announce-divorce/?sh=4f23e9b94272">surprise divorce</a>, according to SEC filings. That makes Melinda worth at least $2.4 billion, while the stock transfer puts a slight dent in Bill’s net worth, which fell to an estimated $128.1 billion, from $130.4 billion on Tuesday. Even after the ten-figure transfer, the Microsoft cofounder remains the fourth richest person in the world.&nbsp;



Melinda received 2.94 million shares of AutoNation and 14.1 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co., which are worth $309 million and $1.5 billion respectively. (Bloomberg News first reported the transfer.) Bill also gave Melinda 25.8 million shares of Mexico-based Coca-Cola Femsa worth $120 million and 155.4 million shares of Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa SA, which are worth $386 million, according to SEC filings. The Wall Street Journal first reported the latter transfer.



Bill uses Cascade Investment, a holding company based in Kirkland, Washington, to manage his money, including the proceeds from selling Microsoft shares. Bill at one point owned a significant slice of Microsoft, but has given away (to the Gates Foundation) or sold most of his stake over the years and now holds less than 1%.



The stock transfer is almost certainly part of Bill and Melinda’s divorce settlement. While it’s unclear if they signed a prenup, according to their divorce filing Bill and Melinda&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/05/03/how-the-gates-split-could-stack-up-against-the-biggest-billionaire-divorces/?sh=12b9b62e2841">asked</a>&nbsp;a judge in Washington state to divide their assets based on the terms of a separation contract—a document that is typically signed when spouses are living apart but have not yet divorced. The terms of the contract weren’t disclosed. Bill may have also transferred other assets to Melinda in non-public transactions.&nbsp;MORE FOR YOU<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/22/vc-firm-of-moderna-chairman-dumped-14-billion-of-stock-in-two-months/">VC Firm Of Moderna Chairman Sold $1.4 Billion Of Stock In Two Months</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/04/07/plaids-134-billion-valuation-makes-its-founders-fintechs-newest-billionaires/">Plaid’s $13.4 Billion Valuation Makes Its Founders Fintech’s Newest Billionaires</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/04/29/endeavor-lands-elusive-ipo-with-emanuel-and-whitesell-controlling-nearly-1-billion-in-shares/">Endeavor Lands Elusive IPO, With Emanuel And Whitesell Controlling Nearly $1 Billion In Shares</a>



A spokesperson for Bill Gates did not reply to a request for comment.&nbsp;A spokesperson for Melinda did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



By Rachel Sandler, Forbes Staff

gettyimages-1156268280-594×594

Melinda French Gates Now A Billionaire After Stock Transfer From Bill Gates

Bill Gates, the co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, has announced on Twitter moments ago that he and his wife of 27 years, philanthropist and businesswoman Melinda Gates, have made a decision to end their marriage &#8220;after a great deal of thought and a lot of work&#8221; on their relationship.



In a combined statement, they added: &#8220;Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives. We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.&#8221;



The Gates&#8217; chair the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, the world&#8217;s largest private charitable foundation. In mid-March 2020, Gates stepped down as a board member of Microsoft, the software firm he founded with Paul Allen (d. 2018) in 1975.



Among the world&#8217;s richest people, Bill Gates is ranked number 4 on Forbes world billionaires list with a real time net worth of $130.5 billion.

French President Receives Bill Gates, the co-Founder of the Microsoft Company At Elysee Palace

Bill And Melinda Gates End 27-Year Marriage

The world’s fourth-richest person has a plan to save the planet from catastrophic climate change — and it&#8217;s cheaper than you think.



Bill Gates wants you to know two numbers: 51 billion and zero. The former is the number of tons of greenhouse gases typically added to the atmosphere each year as a result of human activities. The latter is the number of tons we need to get to by 2050 in order to avert a climate crisis.



Gates has a plan for how to go from 51 billion to zero, and he’s happy to say it doesn’t come with a price tag in the trillions of dollars. As you might expect from a guy who made his fortune in technology, the billionaire’s suggested solution is tied in large part to innovation.&nbsp;



He spells out his plan in a new book,&nbsp;How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need,&nbsp;to be released on February 16. Ahead of the book launch, Gates talked to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;about why he wrote the book. He also shared details the book doesn’t get into, including how much he’s invested in zero-carbon companies, which ones he’s most excited about, including a new kind of nuclear power plant, and what he’s likely to invest in next.



Goal number one of the book, says Gates, is to clearly lay out which sectors of the economy are producing the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere each year. “The actual numeric framework, which is the most basic thing for any problem you want to tackle&#8230;that’s really been missing,” Gates says in a video interview from a conference room in his offices in Seattle. (See table for the percentage breakdown.)  The goal we as a planet need to aim for: zero emissions by 2050. Gates is optimistic that as hard as it sounds, we can get there.   



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<h2 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-how-it-adds-up-globally-51-billion-tons">How It Adds Up Globally: 51 Billion Tons  </h2>



Emissions dropped about 5% in 2020 due to the pandemic, Gates estimates. But in a normal year the world adds 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, Gates writes in his book.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="594" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-1024x594.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50037" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-1024x594.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-300x174.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-768x446.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-1536x892.png 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34-600x348.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-18-at-11.05.34.png 1602w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Photo by Forbes </figcaption></figure>



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Gates admits, both in his book and when we spoke, that he is an imperfect messenger on climate change. “The very idea that one person is saying they know what we should do —appropriately, there is some pushback,” he says. In his book, he writes, “The world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think technology can fix any problem.” He admits to owning big houses and flying in private jets, though he tells me that he buys carbon offsets for $400 a ton for the private jet flights he takes. “I can’t deny being a rich guy with an opinion. I do believe, though, that it is an informed opinion, and I am always trying to learn more,” he writes.&nbsp;



Gates presciently warned in a 2015 talk about the dangers of a global pandemic and what we’d need to do to prepare for it. Similarly, this is not his first public prescription for the climate. In 2010 he gave a<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_innovating_to_zero?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;TED talk</a>&nbsp;calling for the need to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050. He’s continued to consult experts in the field and delve into the latest in climate science and policy. In 2015 he got involved in the Paris Climate Summit, calling France’s then president, Francois Hollande, and encouraging him to get countries to agree to raise their R&amp;D budgets for clean tech innovation. Twenty countries signed on. Says Gates, “Although we did not see all those countries double their R&amp;D budgets, we did see some increase. That’s sort of when the field started to focus on can we get this innovation to take place.”



To help put a framework around progress and the cost of new carbon-free innovations, Gates and his team came up with a term called “Green Premium” and introduced it in his blog,<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Introducing-the-Green-Premiums" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Gates Notes</a>, in September last year. As he explains it, the Green Premium spells out the difference in cost between a product or process that doesn’t emit carbon with one that does. Green Premiums have fallen in the passenger car sector to the point where more people are buying electric cars (though Gates points out that just 2% of global auto sales are electric vehicles). In the industrial sector, however, Green Premiums are much higher. Says Gates, “The hardest problems to solve are in areas like steel and concrete and even transportation things like aviation fuel.” The problems he’s referring to: coming up with processes to make these products that don’t emit greenhouse gases. The research is in its early stages, and that’s where government R&amp;D can play a role, Gates suggests.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s It All Going To Cost?&nbsp;</h3>



In December, Gates suggested<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/How-the-US-can-lead-on-climate-change-innovation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;in his blog</a>&nbsp;that the U.S. create a National Institutes of Energy Innovation to help the country take the lead in climate change innovation. The idea is to model it after the National Institutes of Health, the backbone of U.S. medical research, which has an annual budget of about $37 billion. Gates says current U.S. government R&amp;D spending on energy innovation is about $7 billion annually; that would need to be quintupled to match government spending on the NIH.



Another suggestion from Gates: shift the tax credits now available for solar and wind to more nascent areas like offshore wind, energy storage and new types of steel. “If you do that, and maybe double or triple the amount you spend on those tax benefits, then I do think that will be just a monumental contribution from the Biden administration,” he explains.



Whatever tech innovation comes out of the U.S. or elsewhere has to be affordable enough for countries like India to adopt it, Gates points out. Right now, the U.S. accounts for 14% of the world’s emissions. If just the U.S. gets to zero carbon emissions, we won’t be solving the problem globally.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Where Gates Is Investing</h3>



Gates, whose<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?sh=68241add689f">&nbsp;$124 billion fortune</a>&nbsp;stems from an estimated 1% stake in Microsoft and a variety of other investments, says in the book he’s put “more than $1 billion” into companies working toward zero emissions. How much more? Altogether, he tells&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it’s about $2 billion. He describes himself as perhaps the biggest funder of direct air capture technologies—methods to capture carbon from the air. Two of the more well-known companies he’s been an investor in are producing plant-based meats:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2020/07/30/impossible-foods-joins-beyond-on-the-shelves-of-walmart-americas-no-1-meat-seller/?sh=3d7caaf52685">Impossible Foods</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2020/11/16/green-and-lean-beyond-meat-announces-two-new-better-for-you-plant-based-burgers/?sh=49333f12299f">Beyond Meat</a>. Some of his investing he categorizes as philanthropic, like the money he’s put toward an open source climate model that aims to show how electricity generation will work in long periods of tough weather when wind and solar would be shut down.&nbsp;



His biggest bet has been on TerraPower, a nuclear power company with a reactor that uses depleted uranium as its fuel. Gates founded the company with a few others more than a decade ago. In 2017, TerraPower formed a joint venture with a Chinese company and was planning to produce its first reactor in China. That deal was scuttled by the U.S. government, which in late 2019 blocked U.S. cooperation with China on civilian nuclear power. Now the plan is to build a demonstration plant somewhere in the U.S. In October the U.S. Department of Energy awarded<a href="https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/us-department-energy-announces-160-million-first-awards-under-advanced-reactor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;$80 million</a>&nbsp;to TerraPower toward construction of the plant; the agreement is that half of the funding will come from the private sector. Gates says, “That’s coming largely from me.”



His hope is that the demonstration plant will be built within five to seven years. “If things go well, that means that maybe in 10 years, commercial plant builders would take that design and build it ideally in the hundreds—which is what you need to have an impact on climate change.”&nbsp;



Gates has also invested in zero-carbon companies through Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a group he assembled that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/12/12/bill-gates-launches-1-billion-breakthrough-energy-investment-fund/?sh=41728d6a5b7d">launched in December 2016</a>. “It was a lot easier to raise the money than I expected,” he says. “I made about 22 calls and got about 20 yeses for the first billion.” Investors include billionaires such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=548de8471b23">Jeff Bezos</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/vinod-khosla/?sh=26fd668a3e07">Vinod Khosla</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/john-arnold/?sh=49c99d011001">John Arnold</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/?sh=53bd068026c5">John Doerr</a>; Gates says he’s the largest investor. So far Breakthrough Energy Ventures has invested in 40 companies; One, QuantumScape, which is developing lithium metal batteries for electric vehicles and has no revenues yet, went public through a SPAC last November. Though many of the companies are still early stage, Gates describes some as “really wild,” including QuidNet, which is working to store electricity by pumping water into pressured underground wells; when energy is needed, the water is released and goes through a turbine, creating electricity.&nbsp;



Breakthrough Energy Ventures raised another $1 billion fund in January, with most of the same initial investors and some newcomers. (Gates didn’t disclose names.) He says he’s the largest investor in the latest fund, too. The new fund will look to invest in more of the industrial processes like low-carbon cement and steel production as well as technologies to capture carbon from the air, Gates says.



Over the next five years, Gates says “I’ll put in at least $2 billion” toward zero-carbon technologies. But while a total of $4 billion is a lot of money, for someone worth more than $120 billion, it’s a small sliver of his overall investments. Says Gates, “It’s more limited by what is out there that can have a high impact.”



One of Gates’ other investments that’s been in the news recently seems to fly in the face of his zero-carbon focus. In early February, Gates’ investment arm, Cascade, partnered with Blackstone Group and private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners in a $4.7 billion deal to buy Signature Aviation, the world’s largest operator of private jet bases. Private jet travel has been booming during the pandemic, but such travel emits a heck of a lot of greenhouse gases. How does he square the deal with the premise of his book? A spokesperson for Gates did not reply to the question.



Will Gates’ book influence policy makers and move the needle toward innovation in zero-carbon technologies? It helps that combating climate change is already one of the Biden administration’s top four priorities. Given that the book is addressing weighty material, it’s relatively easy to read, sprinkled with Gates’ personal observations&nbsp; and even a photo of him with his son Rory on a visit to a geothermal power plant in Iceland. (Gates says he and Rory liked to visit power plants for fun.) He mentions that he drives an electric car&nbsp;—&nbsp;the Porsche Taycan Turbo, which he describes to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;as “ridiculously nice and ridiculously expensive” — that sells for $150,000 or more. (He’s such a fan that he got one of the first demo models, he adds.)



If nothing else, Gates wants to get people talking. “My hope is that we can shift the conversation by sharing the facts with the people in our lives— our family members, friends, and leaders.&nbsp;And not just the facts that tell us why we need to act, but also those that show us the actions that will do the most good,” he writes.&nbsp;



A bigger measure of his success will be whether the Biden administration adopts any of his policy proposals. Says Gates, “I do think that with those increases [in spending], we’ll be doing exactly what we need to do, not just for us, but for the entire world.”



By Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes Staff

How To Solve Climate Change: Bill Gates Wants You To Know Two Numbers

Some of the world’s richest people publicly congratulated Joe Biden’s historic presidential victory over the weekend, even though billionaire Donald Trump hasn’t yet admitted defeat.



One billionaire—hedge fund cowboy Bill Ackman, whose&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/william-ackman/?sh=3e214709298d">net worth</a>&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates at $2 billion—directly advised Trump to concede in a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/billackman/status/1325225698248839168?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>. “There comes a time in the battle when one should fold the tent. Instead focus on your accomplishments over the last four years,” Ackman wrote Saturday. “Concede graciously and call for unity from all who have supported you.”



Other billionaires congratulated Biden on his win, including Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates. “I look forward to working with the new administration and leaders on both sides in Congress on getting the surging pandemic under control,” Gates&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1325138315964682246?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;shortly after Biden was projected as the winner by the Associated Press on Saturday.&nbsp;



It’s a notable reaction from the third richest person in the world. As the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gates, who’s currently worth $118 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2020/04/Gates-Foundation-Expands-Commitment-to-COVID-19-Response-Calls-for-International-Collaboration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pledged</a>&nbsp;$300 million from his charitable foundation for vaccine development and other efforts. He’s also criticized the U.S. response to date,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/09/20/bill-gates-us-needs-to-own-up-to-the-fact-that-we-didnt-do-a-good-job/?sh=12a76b653fb8">telling</a>&nbsp;Fox News in September that “we did a very poor job” and need to &#8220;own up to the fact.”



The world’s richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also chimed in on Instagram. “Unity, empathy, and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era,” the ecommerce executive, who we estimate is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=451ac1ea1b23">worth</a>&nbsp;$190 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTZ-TyHqjN/?igshid=11uu42usw74ba" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>&nbsp;as the caption to a photo of Biden and Harris high-fiving.



A few of Biden’s billionaire donors also cheered his win. Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, whose net worth Forbes estimates at nearly $20 billion, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a> $100,000 to his campaign. She celebrated Harris’ historic ascendency as the first woman and first Black American and Asian American person to become vice president in a Saturday tweet, describing the achievement as a “glass ceiling shattered once and for all.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">We celebrate our democracy, our common humanity, and a glass ceiling shattered once and for all. <a href="https://t.co/IhvGLBcALd">pic.twitter.com/IhvGLBcALd</a>&mdash; Laurene Powell Jobs (@laurenepowell) <a href="https://twitter.com/laurenepowell/status/1325124457262850052?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Former venture capitalist-turned-media personality&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chris-sacca/?sh=37a2ca44220a">Chris Sacca</a>, who with his wife Crystal Sacca donated $420,000 of their estimated $1.1 billion fortune to Biden, also applauded the election’s outcome. “Joe and Kamala bring science, innovation and an understanding of the climate opportunity back to the White House,”&nbsp; Sacca&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/sacca/status/1325226113119891456?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Saturday, saying he gave that statement to a news organization owned by conservative media tycoon (and longtime Trump friend) Rupert Murdoch, but the news organization told Sacca they weren’t going to publish it. “I couldn’t be more bullish” about what Biden’s administration means for investors, he added.&nbsp;



“I want to congratulate @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris on a historic win,” Illinois governor and billionaire J.B. Pritzker&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/GovPritzker/status/1325113433487003657?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>, adding that he’s looking forward to working with their administration.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;previously reported that Pritzker and his wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a>&nbsp;$1.4 million to Biden’s campaign, and that his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jb-pritzker/?sh=b22443b38146">net worth</a>&nbsp;is estimated around $3.5 billion.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Entertainment billionaires Oprah Winfrey and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2020/09/01/from-poor-as-hell-to-billionaire-how-tyler-perry-changed-show-business-forever/?sh=6a25b7e234b5">Tyler Perry</a>&nbsp;also weighed in. Winfrey, who we&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/oprah-winfrey/?sh=8e46c155745f">estimate</a>&nbsp;is worth $2.6 billion, hailed Biden’s win as a “reset” for the “soul of America.” Perry, who&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates to be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/tyler-perry/?sh=5707ea8e13dd">worth</a>&nbsp;$1 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/tylerperry/status/1325165060008783880?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Saturday that “change is here,” adding, “I’m sitting here in tears!”



Trump wasn’t the only billionaire running in 2020. Climate change activist Tom Steyer and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg also ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination. After dropping out, Steyer and his wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a>&nbsp;$640,000 to Biden from their $1.4 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/thomas-steyer/?sh=396bdad073f5">fortune</a>, while Bloomberg—who spent $1 billion on his own campaign—gave&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2020/10/31/the-top-5-richest-backers-of-joe-biden/?sh=126cecfa6413">$15 million</a>&nbsp;of his nearly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-bloomberg/?sh=15ef5ad61417">$55 billion</a>&nbsp;fortune to various progressive organizations. Both men&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer/status/1325114359832473600?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">congratulated</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1325118275441881088?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Biden</a>&nbsp;on his win.



Virgin founder Richard Branson, who is British (and who we estimate is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/?sh=1a93afbd6ff5">worth</a> $4.6 billion) offered international best wishes to Biden as president-elect. “Now is the time to bring America together as a United States and start the healing,” Branson <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/richardbranson/status/1325163037607694338?s=20" target="_blank">tweeted</a>. “The world will be rooting for that.”



By Lisette Voytko, Forbes Staff

US-ECONOMICS-GATES

Here’s How Bill Gates And Other Billionaires Are Reacting To Biden’s Election Victory

Even with the presidential election in flux, the U.S. stock market—led by a rally in tech shares—jumped on Wednesday, helping America’s ten richest people add billions of dollars to their fortunes.



Both Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden claimed they would win the race, despite several battleground states still not called, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.&nbsp;



Despite the uncertainty, markets surged on Wednesday, with shares of major tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft leading the rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 400 points, or 1.3%, as of market close on Wednesday, while the S&amp;P 500 was up 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite soared 3.9%.



Some experts on Wall Street attributed the strength in tech stocks to the potential for a split Congress—as it looks less and less likely that Democrats will be able to win back control of the Senate. Although Democrats retained control of the House, Republicans won key Senate races in Iowa and Montana, according to NBC News.



With tech shares soaring, America’s ten richest people—including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg—subsequently gained a combined $28.2 billion in net worth as markets moved higher.



Leading the way was the world’s richest person, Amazon founder and CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#683c93f51b23">Jeff Bezos</a>, whose net worth rose by $10.5 billion, to $190.6 billion. Amazon stock was up 6.3% on Wednesday.



Facebook CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=rtb/#29585cf43e06">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;gained $8 billion as Facebook shares rose 8.3%. The world’s fourth richest person, he now has a net worth of $105.5 billion.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/#41cb54a7689f">Bill Gates</a>, the world’s third-richest person, saw his fortune rise $663 million—pushing his net worth up to $115.9 billion. Gates, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975, has sold or given away much of his stake in the company—but still owns an estimated 1% of shares, which rose nearly 5% on Wednesday.&nbsp;



Another former Microsoft executive,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-ballmer/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=430303664818">Steve Ballmer</a>, gained $2.8 billion, with his net worth moving up to $73.5 billion amid the market rally. He owns an estimated 3.5% stake in Microsoft.



Google cofounders&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-page/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=2e97a1ec7893">Larry Page</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=d67b8cc4b432">Sergey Brin</a>&nbsp;saw their fortunes rise $4 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively, as Google’s stock jumped over 6%. Both are major shareholders of Google-parent company Alphabet; Page is worth $77 billion while Brin is worth $74.9 billion.



Among America’s ten richest people, four saw a drop in their fortunes on Wednesday. Tesla CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=fda57287999b">Elon Musk</a>’s net worth fell by about $560 million as shares of his electric vehicle maker were down 0.7%. He owns a 21% stake in the company and is now worth $93.1 billion.



Renowned investor&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=5e3030bb4639">Warren Buffett</a>&nbsp;also saw his fortune drop slightly. His investing conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, saw its stock fall by 0.4%, shaving $215 million off of Buffett’s net worth, which now stands at $78 billion.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=fa0347724c2c">Larry Ellison</a>, cofounder and chief technology officer of software giant Oracle, lost $391 million, lowering his net worth to $75.1 billion. Ellison owns about 35% of Oracle’s stock, which was down 0.6% on Wednesday.



Walmart heiress <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/alice-walton/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=360204a4eb21">Alice Walton</a>, meanwhile, saw her fortune fall $309 million as Walmart’s stock lost 0.6%, giving her a net worth of $66.6 billion.



-By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

Amazon CEO And Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos  Speaks At Air Force Association Air, Space And Cyber Conference

America’s Ten Richest People Are $28 Billion Richer As Election Bolsters Big Tech Prospects

Meet the billionaire winners and losers of the dot-com bubble, Great Recession and Covid-19 crash.



Crashes, wipe-outs, recessions.&nbsp;Fortunes are often forged, or fumbled away, in the fire of economic downturns. When the Covid-19 pandemic began to sweep the world in early 2020, the wealth of U.S. billionaires plummeted in lockstep with the stock market. Yet, just six months after the market bottomed out, and with the coronavirus still to be contained,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">The Forbes 400 richest Americans are doing better than ever, worth a record $3.2 trillion</a>&nbsp;in all. In other words, the pain—at least for the ultra-rich—was remarkably short lived.



So&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;dug through the archives to compare how America’s billionaire class has fared during and after the past three big market drops: the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, the Great Recession of the late 2000s and the Covid-19 meltdown of this year. Each downturn hit different industries hardest, but a common theme is clear: The billionaires who are down are rarely out, and there are always clever thinkers amassing new riches, even when times are tough.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The Dot-Com Crash</h1>



As a huge wave of consumers around the globe joined the internet, rabid investors hoping to get in on the tech boom poured funds into wildly unprofitable startups promising to change the world. The S&amp;P 500 hit a record high in March 2000. Then the bubble began to burst, sending the S&amp;P down 50% over the next two and a half years. Jeff Bezos began an April 2001 letter to Amazon shareholders with a single word: “Ouch.” There were 298 billionaires on the 2000 Forbes 400 list, worth a total of $1.2 trillion; by 2002, the list had lost 73 billionaires and $350 billion in aggregate net worth. Markets, which were also hit by the 9/11 terror attacks, didn’t fully recover until May 2007—more than seven years after the bubble popped.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Losers:</h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bill Gates</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47334" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>(Photo by Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)</figcaption></figure></div>



Shares of Microsoft plummeted 63% in 2001, helping shave $9 billion off Gates’ net worth for the 2001 Forbes 400 (and he’d drop by another $11 billion in 2002). Yet there were promising signs: The federal government announced that it would no longer seek to break up Microsoft, which was just a month away from releasing a new product: the hit Xbox.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Monte Zweben</h3>



Of the 51 people who fell off The Forbes 400 in 2001, none fell harder than Zweben, who took his ecommerce software startup Blue Martini public in 2000—then&nbsp;watched as 98% of his $1.4 billion fortune evaporated in less than a year when shares nosedived. Zweben has founded and run a handful of tech outfits since, but has never made it back onto The Forbes 400.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Stanley Druckenmiller</h3>



The head of George Soros’ Quantum Fund, Druckenmiller struck gold shorting the British Pound in 1992 but eight years later made an ill-timed bet on tech at the height of the bubble. “I bought $6 billion worth of tech stocks, and in six weeks I had lost $3 billion in that one play,”&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2018/05/16/druckenmillers-big-mistake/" target="_blank">he later recalled</a>. “I didn’t learn anything. I already knew that I wasn’t supposed to do that. I was just an emotional basketcase and I couldn’t help myself.”



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Winners:</h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Mark Cuban</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47631" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



He got rich selling internet radio company Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in cash and stock in 1999—near the top of the dot-com bubble. Then he made an even smarter move, using collars to protect his Yahoo stock from a price drop, which soon came when the shares plummeted 90% in 2000.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Leon Levy</h3>



The investor who helped build Oppenheimer &amp; Co. made more than $100 million shorting the Nasdaq as the&nbsp;market sputtered. When the longtime optimist spoke with&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in 2002, he was still bearish about a market recovery. “The outlook for profits is disappointing,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1209/174.html#4b3528df476b">Levy warned</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Thomas Bailey</h3>



The founder of mutual fund giant Janus Capital managed to find a way to sell his shares high, even during the market low—thanks to an unusual agreement that gave him the right to sell his stake to Janus’ parent company for a price based on the prior year’s profits. In 2001, with Janus struggling along with the rest of the economy, Bailey decided to sell—forcing the company to purchase his shares for&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-12-me-56332-story.html" target="_blank">double their market value</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The Great Recession</h1>



A real estate market run rampant came crashing down in late 2007, sending the U.S. economy spiraling into a historic recession. The federal government&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/heres-how-much-2008-bailouts-really-cost" target="_blank">spent some $500 billion on bailouts</a>&nbsp;for the likes of big banks, automakers and insurers. In 2009, more than two-thirds of the list was poorer than the year before as the aggregate wealth of the bunch fell by $300 billion. The S&amp;P, which peaked in October 2007, didn’t make up its losses for five and a half years.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Winners:</h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Warren Buffett</h3>



The crash hit the Oracle of Omaha hard at first, with Berkshire Hathaway stock tumbling 32% in 2008, along with the broader market. But the famed value investor, who has long preached being “fearful when others are greedy” and “greedy when others are fearful,&#8221; used the crash to go&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html" target="_blank">bargain hunting</a>. He snapped up preferred stock of titans like Goldman Sachs, General Electric and Dow Chemical on the cheap, bets that earned billions as the companies recovered.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Andrew Beal</h3>



In 2004, as personal and corporate debt ballooned in the market runup, the shrewd banker began hoarding cash. He struck when the markets began to tumble in 2007, gobbling up loans and assets from struggling banks for pennies on the dollar, quickly juicing his profits. “This is the opportunity of my lifetime,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/banking-andy-beal-business-wall-street-beal.html#3d7b4261a4d5">Beal told&nbsp;Forbes</a>&nbsp;in the middle of the crisis.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">John Paulson</h3>



The biggest short: Paulson, a hedge funder who was convinced the economy was on the verge of collapse, began shorting the subprime real estate market before the crash. He&nbsp;pocketed some $4 billion from the bold bet, catapulting him from less than $300 million in net worth to a spot on The Forbes 400 in a single year. By 2008, he’d be worth $4.5 billion.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The COVID Crash</h1>



The Covid crash came on fast, with S&amp;P 500 diving 34% from its February 2020 peak in less than a month, as the virus spread around the globe. But, for most members of The Forbes 400, the downturn didn’t last long. The S&amp;P recouped all of its losses in just 181 days, and was again hitting new record highs by August 18. America’s richest billionaires are, once again,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">richer than ever</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Losers:</h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Micky Arison</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="855" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-855x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47632" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-855x1024.jpg 855w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-scaled-300x359.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-scaled-600x718.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-251x300.jpg 251w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-768x920.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-1283x1536.jpg 1283w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-1710x2048.jpg 1710w" sizes="(max-width: 855px) 100vw, 855px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Like other cruise operators, his Carnival Corp. has been crippled by the coronavirus. In early 2020, more than 700 passengers on a ship operated by Carnival’s Princess Cruises&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/04/24/coronavirus-cleanup-how-cruise-ship-sanitized-after-outbreak-diamond-princess/5136469002/" target="_blank">reportedly became infected</a>&nbsp;with the virus. In May, Congress said it’s probing the company’s virus policies. (Carnival has said it will cooperate with the investigation.) Meanwhile, shares sunk 68% from last year’s Forbes 400 list through late July 2020, knocking Arison’s fortune down by 31%, to $5.6 billion.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Edward DeBartolo, Jr.</h3>



The real estate mogul, who pleaded guilty to not reporting a bribe from a Louisiana government official in 1998, got a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in February. Financially, things have been a bit rockier: Shares of Simon Property Group, which make up much of his fortune, have fallen 60% since last year’s list as America’s largest mall owner reels from the crisis. He and his family sold their DeBartolo Realty to Simon in 1998 for $1.5 billion in stock.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Harold Hamm</h3>



&#8220;It just grabbed my imagination that anybody could find this hidden, ancient wealth and it was yours,&#8221; the fracking pioneer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/066.html#73d8b86d3681">gushed to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;about his love of the oil business in 2009</a>. What a difference a decade makes. With a price war and lower demand for fuel cratering oil prices, Hamm’s having a tough go of it these days. His fortune has fallen $3.7 billion since last year’s Forbes 400 as shares of his Continental Resources have dropped 43%.



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Winners:</h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Eric Yuan</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47633" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-scaled-600x401.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-2048x1367.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



With the world working from home, the Zoom founder <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/19/zoom-zoom-zoom-the-exclusive-inside-story-of-the-new-billionaire-behind-techs-hottest-ipo/">is cashing in big</a> as his video conferencing app has become a corporate darling. Shares are up more than 500% since Zoom’s April 2019 IPO, launching Yuan onto The Forbes 400 list for the first time, with an $11 billion fortune.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Reed Hastings</h3>



His stay-at-home staple Netflix has reaped the rewards of a world in quarantine, with hits like “Tiger King” and “Extraction.” The streaming service&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2020/09/07/how-netflixs-reed-hastings-rewrote-the-hollywood-script/#5620b13215df">has added around 1 million subscriptions a month</a>&nbsp;in the U.S. and Canada, plus another 2 million a month abroad, since the pandemic began.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Ernest Garcia III</h3>



Carvana—the “Amazon of used cars” that he cofounded as part of his billionaire father Ernest Garcia II’s DriveTime Automotive Group—is another Covid lockdown hit, with shares up 77% since last year’s list. Carvana, which the Garcias spun out of DriveTime and took public in 2017, allows customers to buy and sell cars online.



-Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes Staff

Forbes Media Centennial Celebration

Billionaires On The Brink: How The Forbes 400 Makes And Loses Billions During Market Crashes

Redmond, Washington-based satellite tech firm Kymeta has closed an $85.2 million investment round led by billionaire Bill Gates, as the company looks to develop its antenna technology providing internet and cell service to moving vehicles.



KEY FACTS Gates contributed $78.5 million to the funding round, which also included another $1 million in personal investments from Kymeta executives.



This isn’t the first time Gates has invested in Kymeta: The billionaire participated in the company’s first-ever fundraising round in 2012 and led a $62 million investment in 2016.



The money will be used to market and develop its latest product, an antenna in the form of a flat panel that can be mounted onto moving vehicles, such as an ambulance or military truck, ensuring they can connect to satellites providing Internet and cell service on-the-go.



The company started beta testing this week and plans to officially launch the product later this year initially targeting the military, first responders and other commercial customers.



Kymeta will eventually be able to provide its services to customers in a variety of industries, according to VentureBeat.



CRUCIAL QUOTE “Having the continued support of Bill Gates will help us execute our vision even more rapidly and broadly—and with the benefit of experience, perspective and relationships of a leading and highly successful technology backer,” executive chairman Doug Hutcheson said in a statement.



KEY BACKGROUND The fundraising round comes as major players get into the satellite business. Elon Musk is launching low earth orbit “Starlink” satellites through SpaceX. And Amazon got FCC approval late last month to deploy a constellation of 3,236 satellites as part of its Project Kuiper initiative.



-Rachel Sandler,Forbes Staff

Bill Gates Leads $85 Million Round In Company Outfitting Moving Vehicles With On-The-Go Internet, Cell Service

It’s not just Amazon stock that has boosted the fortunes of its billionaire backer. Dramatic changes in the share prices of Tesla, Reliance and Microsoft have reshuffled the ranks of the top ten richest in the world since March.



 Between last Friday afternoon after markets closed and 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jeff Bezos’ net worth fell by $8 billion. That’s a huge sum — the combined value of the NFL’s New England Patriots ($4.1 billion) and the New York Giants ($3.9 billion). But for Bezos, who’s worth about $181 billion, it was just a routine couple of days on the job —and a 4.4% decline in his fortune.



Since March 18, the date that Forbes used to calculate net worths for the 2020 World’s Billionaires list, and days after the President declared a national emergency due to the coronavirus, Amazon’s stock price has soared nearly 69%. As shoppers who sheltered at home during the pandemic turned to Amazon for ordering more purchases, its market cap reached a record $1.5 trillion, and Bezos’ fortune jumped $68 billion. Even with the slight downtick in the last two days, investors aren’t worried – mostly chalking it up to portfolio rebalancing, or momentum stocks retreating a bit after a strong run.



Bezos is not the only billionaire to get much richer during the pandemic. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has gone from No. 31 wealthiest in the world in mid-March to No. 9 as of Tuesday. His net worth has nearly tripled in the last four months, to $69.1 billion from $24.6 billion, largely due to a massive 320% rally in Tesla’s stock. It’s the first time Musk ranks among the world’s top ten richest. “I really couldn’t care less,” Musk told Forbes in early July, commenting on the size of his fortune. “Those numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.”



Another big gainer of the past several months is Mukesh Ambani, an Indian business magnate and chairman of Reliance Industries, whose telecom firm Reliance Jio has attracted billions of dollars in investments in 2020, including $5.7 billion from Facebook in April and $1.2 billion from U.A.E.’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala in June. On July 15 Google confirmed it would invest $4.5 billion in Jio. That, in turn, has helped lead to a surge in the share price of Reliance. Ambani is now the seventh richest person in the world, worth $71.4 billion, nearly twice his net worth in mid-March. The last time Ambani was in the top 10 was in 2011, with a $27 billion fortune.



Also new to the top ten since March: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft. Microsoft stock is up a striking 47% since mid March, landing Ballmer at the world’s No. 6 richest, worth $72.1 billion.



Whiplash 2020: Shakeup Among Top 10



Musk and Ballmer join the ​upper echelon, while Buffett falls to his lowest rank in at least 20 years.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires.png" alt="" class="wp-image-46513" width="686" height="664" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires.png 592w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires-300x290.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 686px) 100vw, 686px" /></figure>



Of course, as some climb up the ranks, others must go down – and some go up and down a lot. Bernard Arnault was worth $108 billion in late January. He fell to $76 billion in mid March, as people worried about spending on luxury goods. He is back up to $111.1 billion, and number three in the world.



Despite only a $3.5 billion drop in his net worth since March, Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, is down four spots and now the eighth richest person in the world. It’s the lowest Buffett has ranked in at least 20 years. The Waltons, the family behind Walmart, had three members – Jim Walton, Alice Walton and Rob Walton – who rounded out the top ten in mid-March. While their net worths on Tuesday were actually up $3 billion, those increases were not enough for them to hold onto their spots as others including Musk, Ambani and Ballmer surged ahead.



The only certainty with markets like this is that billions can be gained – and lost – and regained in a matter of hours.



&#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/">Angel Au-Yeung</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/worlds-billionaires">Billionaires</a>

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Why Jeff Bezos Lost $8 Billion In The Last 2 Days – And Why That’s Not A Big Deal

One of the most powerful women in the world is teaming up with one of the richest women in the world—Melinda Gates and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mackenzie-bezos/#efc49bc12948">MacKenzie Bezos</a>, respectively—to host a competition with one goal in mind: gender equality.



Gates and Bezos announced the competition, called the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, through Pivotal Ventures, Gates’ investment and incubation company. The challenge will be managed by Lever For Change, a MacArthur Foundation affiliate, and will grant $30 million to the organizations (or the coalitions of organizations) with the best ideas for helping to expand women’s power and influence in the United States by 2030.



“Closing the gap on gender equality will benefit everyone. History keeps teaching us that when a diversity of voices is represented in decisions, the outcome is better for all,” MacKenzie Bezos said in a statement Tuesday. “I’m excited that the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge will focus energy and innovation on this vital catalyst for positive change.” 



“The entrenched inequalities that divide America—race, gender, class—will not go away without systems-wide change,” added Melinda Gates in a statement of her own. “This challenge is seeking bold ideas to dismantle the status quo and expand power and influence for women of all backgrounds.”&nbsp;



While Melinda Gates has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2015/11/23/the-first-woman-of-women-how-melinda-gates-became-the-worlds-most-powerful-advocate-for-women-and-girls/#7eae6d1a4414">long been an outspoken advocate</a> for women’s health and gender equality, Bezos has been quieter with her philanthropy and influence. Since finalizing her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos last year, Bezos has indicated her philanthropic intentions by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2019/05/28/mackenzie-bezos-will-donate-half-her-fortune-to-giving-pledge/#e8b7ffc31d89">signing the Giving Pledge</a> (thereby committing at least half of her now-$51 billion fortune to charity) and joining the board of Blue Meridian, an organization dedicated to helping children and families in poverty. Her contribution to the Equality Can’t Wait initiative marks her biggest public gift to date.



A spokesperson for Lever for Change said that the competition had been in the works for the past six months, and that the timing of its announcement—just weeks after massive protests against systemic racial inequities started spreading across the nation—is not meant to be a reaction to the current reality, but a continuation of serious conversations.



Broadly, the challenge will look for ideas that help dismantle barriers that hold women back (including but not limited to sexual harassment and discrimination, racial inequity, and inadequate federal policies around caregiving); fast-track female participation in sectors like technology, government and entrepreneurship; and change outdated systems and beliefs around gender. Specifically,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.equalitycantwaitchallenge.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to the challenge’s website</a>, successful proposals should create real, measurable change for women in at least one of the following areas: wages and wealth, unpaid care, share of leadership roles, content creation (in other words, increasing the percentage of cultural and intellectual content created by women), and public perception.



&#8220;When I taught my first course on women in the U.S. economy back in 1985, a female full-time, year-round worker made 65 cents for every dollar earned by a man. In 2018, she earned 82 cents. That’s a raise of less than a penny a year,” noted Cecilia Conrad, the CEO of Lever for Change. She’s hopeful that the Equality Can’t Wait competition will accelerate parity in wages and societal treatment.



To participate in the challenge, organizations must register online by September 1, 2020; fuller applications are due by September 22. Finalists will be announced in early 2021, and winners will be chosen next summer. The $30 million in prize money will be divided among the two most compelling ideas (each will receive a minimum of $10 million) and the remaining finalists.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/">Maggie McGrath</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbeswomen">ForbesWomen</a>

MacKenzie Bezos And Melinda Gates Team Up On $30 Million Gender Equity Contest

The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $1.6 billion to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for life-saving vaccines.



The Seattle-based Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a five-year, $1.6 billion commitment to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to deliver life-saving vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.



This was announced at the Global Vaccine Summit 2020, hosted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom. It will help Gavi reach an additional 300 million children in the world’s most vulnerable communities and save up to eight million lives.



In addition to supporting the continuation of routine immunization services during the current Covid-19 crisis, Gavi will deploy potential Covid-19 vaccines to low-income countries when they become available.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">&#8220;To beat the Covid-19 pandemic, the world needs more than breakthrough science. It needs breakthrough generosity.&#8221; – Bill Gates</blockquote>



“And that’s what we’re seeing today as leaders across the public and private sectors are stepping up to support Gavi – especially Prime Minister Johnson,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, in a press statement. “When Covid-19 vaccines are ready, this funding and global coordination will ensure that people all over the world will be able to access them.”



Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chair of the Gavi Board, a Nigerian-born economist and former FORBES WOMAN AFRICA cover star, added: “As we enter one of the toughest periods in our history, with the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting vaccine programs across the globe and causing huge economic damage, this pledge will play a vital role in supporting countries’ efforts to prevent the resurgence of other deadly, vaccine-preventable diseases.”&nbsp;

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Billionaire Backing For Global Vaccines

President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/04/14/president-trump-putting-a-hold-on-funding-to-the-world-health-organization/#fb6a30f63ee6">announcement</a> that the U.S.—the largest sponsor of the World Health Organization—will halt payments to the body in the midst of a pandemic because of its “mismanagement” of the coronavirus crisis has been slammed by the U.N., global leaders and Bill Gates as “dangerous”. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



<ul><li>Trump <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/04/14/president-trump-putting-a-hold-on-funding-to-the-world-health-organization/#4964eb3d63ee">announced</a> he would hold payments in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, while a “review” is carried out to assess what he said was the WHO “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>In response, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2020-04-14/statement-the-secretary-general-the-world-health-organization" target="_blank">statement</a> that now is “not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.&#8221;</li></ul>



<ul><li>Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose philanthropic Gates Foundation is one of the WHO’s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.who.int/westernpacific/about/partnerships/donors" target="_blank">biggest</a> voluntary donors, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1250292126643941376?s=20" target="_blank">criticised</a> the move as being “as dangerous as its sounds…the world needs WHO now more than ever.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>House speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed Trump “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/41420-0" target="_blank">ignoring warnings</a>” about the pandemic for causing “unnecessary deaths.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>She tweeted: “Now more than ever, we need the truth. And the truth is that Donald Trump dismantled the infrastructure handed to him which was meant to plan for and overcome a pandemic, resulting in unnecessary deaths and economic disaster.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>World leaders have urged Trump to rethink the decision, with China calling for the U.S. to fulfill its obligations, Germany and New Zealand calling for unity, while Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the WHO was not immune from criticism.</li></ul>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds. Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs <a href="https://twitter.com/WHO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WHO</a> now more than ever.&mdash; Bill Gates (@BillGates) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1250292126643941376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 15, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Additional info: Trump’s decision comes as nearly 2 million people to date have contracted the coronavirus, 600,000 of them in the U.S., while 126,000 people have died.



Crucial comment: Guterres added: &#8220;Now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences.&#8221;&nbsp;



The Geneva-headquartered body is the part of the U.N. in charge of global public health and has coordinated the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;



Big number: $400 million. That’s how much the U.S. contributed to the WHO budget in 2018-2019, the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52289056" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>. The U.S. makes up about 15% of payments to the WHO and is the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/04/08/which-countries-are-the-biggest-financial-contributors-to-the-world-health-organization-infographic/#57d07d0f494c">largest</a> financial contributor. The WHO is funded through membership payments from its 194 member states, as well as voluntary contributions.



Key background: Trump has threatened to pull out from funding the WHO in recent weeks, despite the U.S. becoming the centre of the global pandemic with the most cases and deaths. Trump accuses the body of being China-centric, declaring a pandemic late, and “opposing travel restrictions to China,” he said on Tuesday. But the WHO has also suggested that the U.S. largely failed to acknowledge the severity of the disease and its potential. The tension between the U.S. and the WHO is just one example of the struggle to implement a global response to the pandemic as individual states grapple with it in their own, unique and sometimes contradictory ways.



Tangent: Donald Trump is not the first U.S. President to defund a U.N. body but this tactic of withholding funds, or withdrawal, has become a hallmark of his administration. The U.S. will cease to be a member of the Paris Climate Agreement this year after Trump formally pulled the U.S. out in 2019, and he has also pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal and the UN Human Rights Council, among other agreements.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/">Isabel Togoh</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

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‘Dangerous As It Sounds’: Bill Gates, World Leaders And U.N. Condemn Trump’s Decision To Halt WHO Funding

One of the world&#8217;s ultimate taste-makers, Bernard Arnault entered an ultra-rarefied club this week. As of Thursday June 20, he was worth just over $100 billion, making him one of three people in the world with 12-figure fortunes. 



He joins Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, worth an estimated $157.5 billion, and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, worth an estimated $103.1 billion. Bezos, who first passed $100 billion in 2017, will soon give a slice of that fortune away. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Hip-Hop’s Next Billionaires: Richest Rappers 2019 (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/arts/2019/06/21/hip-hops-next-billionaires-richest-rappers-2019/" target="_blank">Hip-Hop’s Next Billionaires: Richest Rappers 2019</a>



He and his wife, MacKenzie, are in the process of finalizing their divorce. The couple announced in early April that she will receive a quarter of his Amazon stake, currently valued at more than $37 billion. Gates reached $100 billion in April, thanks to strong earnings from Microsoft.



Arnault’s luxury goods group, LVMH Moët Hennessy–Louis Vuitton, has been having a great year. In April, it announced record first quarter sales and profits on top of a strong 2018. Its shares are up more than 40% so far in 2019, boosting Arnault’s fortune by more than $20 billion.With his family, he owns 46% of LVMH and serves as both its chairman and CEO.



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The growth comes as high-end buyers around the world continue to pick up luxury goods and spirits, despite fears that demand, particularly in China, would slow down. Thirty-five years after Arnault first got into luxury goods with the purchase of Christian Dior, he continues to refresh LVMH by finding ways to appeal to a new generation of customers while retaining the traditional values and high quality that have defined its brands. 



That includes innovative partnerships like the two with Rihanna — Fenty Beauty and Fenty fashion house — as well as recent deals such as the acquisition of Belmond, which operates luxury hotels, trains and even safaris.



“People do not understand that success stems from the cohabitation of two contradictory spirits: the artist&#8217;s vision and the logic of worldwide marketing,&#8221; Arnault told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in 1997. &#8220;It&#8217;s a very complex process.&#8221;



Forbes first wrote about Arnault in 1991 when he was worth $200 million. He has since been featured several times and has appeared on our cover. He made his debut in our Billionaires ranks in 1997. Some readers may know his story well but it’s one worth retelling.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2019/04/05/jeff-bezos-to-give-mackenzie-25-of-his-amazon-stake-worth-tens-of-billions-in-divorce/" target="_blank">Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce</a>



A native of France&#8217;s cold, flat industrial north, Arnault was a star student at France&#8217;s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. The son of a construction tycoon, Arnault spent three years in the U.S. in the early 1980s trying to establish a branch of his family’s real estate business, Ferinel, as a developer of Florida vacation properties. 



After three years he returned home. But he learned a valued lesson in America, according to a 1997 Forbes <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0602/5911080a.html" target="_blank">profile on Arnault</a>. Before leaving, he sold his Mediterranean-style home facing Long Island Sound in New Rochelle, N.Y. to American tycoon John Kluge, owner of the mansion next door. Kluge tore it down because it blocked his view.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">&#8220;It was just incredible!&#8221; Arnault told Forbes. &#8220;It was a very nice place, but two days after he bought it, he tore my house down! It&#8217;s so very&#8230;American.&#8221; Lesson learned: &#8220;When something has to be done,&#8221; says Arnault, &#8220;do it! In France we are full of good ideas, but we rarely put them into practice.&#8221;</blockquote>



He returned back to France ready to make some moves. In 1984, Arnault put up $15 million of his family’s money to rescue bankrupt textile empire Boussac (Lazard put up the rest). Among Boussac’s mixed bag assets was money-losing fashion house Christian Dior. 



That became the first of many Arnault acquisitions and the cornerstone of his massive luxury goods empire. Over the years, LVMH snapped up such brands such as Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Sephora. Today LVMH has nearly $53 billion in sales from 70 brands and 4,590 retail stores.   



-Luisa Kroll; Forbes Staff

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Luxury Goods Titan Bernard Arnault Becomes World’s Third $100 Billion Man

The net worths of big tech’s blue chip billionaires jumped Thursday as soon as stock markets opened. The gains came after both Facebook and Microsoft reported better than expected revenue growth on Wednesday after the market closed. Altogether the value of Facebook and Microsoft shares held by 27 billionaires rose $7.4 billion, thanks to the strong earnings reports.



The biggest gainer by far was Facebook CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/#76f154083e06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a>, the largest individual shareholder in the social network he founded in a Harvard dorm room 15 years ago.&nbsp;Zuckerberg’s fortune rose $3.9 billion on Thursday to $71.8 billion.&nbsp;



Despite concerns over its platforms’ data security and privacy, Facebook’s quarterly revenue exceeded $15 billion, a 26% year-over-year increase. The company estimates that 2.1 billion people use one of its services every day. Its share price on Thursday rose 5.8% to $193.26.



Facebook also disclosed a $3 billion to $5 billion legal charge from the FTC, which it claims dragged its diluted earnings-per-share down 55%. The penalty seems to be tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethcorbin/2019/04/25/with-billions-at-stake-is-facebook-getting-serious-about-privacy/#51b80cd17ed4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sparked a national conversation</a>&nbsp;about the social media giant’s usage of user data. But investors seemed to shrug off that news.&nbsp;



“We’re making significant investments in safety and security while continuing to grow our community and our business. This quarter once again, shows that we can do both,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/sheryl-sandberg/#24035a5c58b6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sheryl Sandberg</a>, Facebook’s billionaire chief operating officer. The 22 billionaire Facebook shareholders’ stakes&nbsp;are&nbsp;collectively&nbsp;worth $5.7 billion&nbsp;more as of 4:30 pm ET Thursday&nbsp;compared to the market close on Wednesday.



The day’s second-biggest gainer was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-ballmer/#6f6c30644818" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Steve Ballmer</a>, the former Microsoft CEO who still holds more shares in the software giant than any other individual.&nbsp;His fortune jumped $1.2 billion, to $48.2 billion.



Microsoft’s earnings&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jjkinahan/2019/04/25/with-earnings-season-turning-out-better-than-expected-market-mostly-upbeat/#4f0f5fa5553e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shattered expectations</a>, with diluted earnings per share up 20%. Its quarterly revenue climbed 14% to $30.6 billion, largely on the back of its commercial cloud business, which alone has jumped 41% year-over-year.



Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 as its 30th&nbsp;employee and served as CEO from 2000 to 2014. He bought the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers from fellow billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/11/19/billionaire-donald-sterling-settles-lawsuit-with-the-nba-over-clippers-sale-to-steve-ballmer/#5ff22915275c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Donald Sterling</a>&nbsp;in 2014&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/11/19/billionaire-donald-sterling-settles-lawsuit-with-the-nba-over-clippers-sale-to-steve-ballmer/#5ff22915275c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">for $2 billion</a>. Ballmer has put $2 billion into a donor-advised fund focused on addressing poverty in America.



He’s not Microsoft’s only big winner today. Cofounder and former CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/#5e3c50ed689f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;sold or gave away most of his shares years ago but still enjoyed a $400 million boost. According to Forbes’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#177b3ef83d78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">real time wealth tracker</a>, he’s now worth $101 billion,&nbsp;one of just two centibillionaires alive, beaten only by Jeff Bezos. (Bezos’s net worth could&nbsp;skyrocket during trading&nbsp;Friday&nbsp;in the wake of&nbsp;a&nbsp;strong quarterly&nbsp;earnings report from Amazon today.)



Overall, the nine members of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#24ecdcbf251c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes World Billionaires list</a>&nbsp;who have significant stakes in Microsoft—a verifiable “who’s who” of investors that include Gates, Ballmer,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/reed-hastings/#28414fa42782" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reed Hastings</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-simonyi/#14bc0c9f6639" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charles Simonyi</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/penny-pritzker/#2debe58c216e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Penny Pritzker</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-stevens/#2b9bc6f1345a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mark Stevens</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/herbert-wertheim/#3bfb9dd9577a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Herbie Wertheim</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/robert-duggan/#31bb751a526d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robert Duggan</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/reid-hoffman/#2f4b31cb1849" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reid Hoffman</a>—saw their fortunes rise a combined $1.7 billion.



Not every billionaire won after Wednesday earnings. Billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/#1ba3a63e7999" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elon Musk</a>lost over $650 million of his net worth, with Tesla facing a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/04/24/tesla-returns-to-the-red-with-bigger-than-expected-702-million-loss/#667cc7a7a2af" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bigger-than-expected $702 million loss</a>.



“This was one of the most complicated quarters I can think of in the history of the company,” Zachary Kirkhorn, Tesla’s new CFO, said on a conference call with analysts.



-Carter Coudriet; Forbes Staff

Global Technology Leaders Attend “Tech for Good” Meeting With France’s President Emmanuel Macron

Zuckerberg, Ballmer Gain Combined $5.1 Billion After Strong Microsoft, Facebook Earnings

The once and future richest person in the world (once the Bezos divorce finalizes), Bill Gates will happily apply the dispassionate, sharp-elbowed logic that made him one of the most fearsome business minds of the past century—even when the subject, abstractly, is him, as well as the other, suddenly unpopular members of the Three Comma Club. 



“I think it’s fascinating that for the first time in my life people are saying, ‘Okay, should you have billionaires?’ ‘Should you have a wealth tax?’ I think it’s a fine discussion.” 



It’s a discussion that took place yesterday just a block from Trump Tower, home of America’s first-ever billionaire president. “My opinion is that there should be an estate tax and maybe even higher than we have today. Among The Forbes 400, I don’t think we’d get a majority—Warren [Buffett] and I are sort of against interest on that,” says Gates. “So I think there’s plenty of debate about how capital should be taxed, how estates should be taxed.” 



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But as for the kind of disincentivizing economics lamented by the Beatles in “Taxman” and increasingly championed by America’s far left, Gates remains clear: “The idea that there shouldn’t be billionaires—I’m afraid if you really implemented something like that, that the amount you would gain would be much less than the amount you would lose.” 



In looking at how Gates now deploys tens of billions philanthropically—both the money he and his wife Melinda put into their eponymous foundation, the world’s largest, and that given and pledged by Buffett—it’s critical to understand that perspective. 



Just as Gates views, correctly, that a tax system moving from progressive to confiscatory creates less wealth and innovation overall, he and Melinda examine issues systemically. 



“It’s more evocative to say you’re saving one life than to say you’re saving a million,” he says. “It’s a weird thing.” 



That worldview comes through in the 2019 edition of the Gateses’ annual letter, released this morning. Ostensibly, this year’s letter, which lays out their philanthropic observations and priorities, focuses on nine surprises that have inspired the Gateses to take action. In reality, it’s a valentine to the power of philanthropic investment—the idea of giving not to salve problems, but to solve them. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“I think it’s fascinating that for the first time in my life people are saying, ‘Okay, should you have billionaires?’”</blockquote>



The Gateses write about Becoming A Man (BAM), a group counseling program that helps teenage boys stay in school by channeling their anger. (Bill Gates says he had a “touching experience” sitting in on a group, and even took his turn to vent—about learning that global polio cases were going up.) 



And their “toilet fair” in Beijing, designed to inspire a next-gen toilet that can alleviate sanitation issues. Their fixation on Africa, whose young population promises to transform the global labor force. 



All of these initiatives tell a similar story. They’re about “picking novel ideas” or “off-the-wall theories,” as Gates says, and then proving that the concepts work. “Once you find a solution and want to scale that up, it’s usually government money.” 



That’s a sticking point when dysfunctional Washington can’t enact even the most obvious forward-thinking policies. Take foreign aid, less than 1% of the U.S. budget and an expenditure that, since the Marshall Plan, has consistently generated positive ROI, in terms of creating stability and vital trading markets and stemming deadly diseases. 



While Congress rejected President Trump’s proposed foreign aid cuts, Gates remains worried. “It just can’t be ignored, given the intensity of political debate over domestic issues—and if you have one party saying, ‘Hey, helping foreign countries, that’s kind of a sucker’s deal, does it even benefit us?’” 



This shortsighted nationalist streak is a global issue. “We’re very worried that if Brexit goes poorly, at least for a time, [the U.K.] might not see [foreign aid] as a priority at all,” he says. “If the French domestic stuff gets too painful, will they stay generous?” 



In education, Gates has faced similar headwinds. “You get into political policy things in terms of what you’re trying to achieve. It’s tricky.” The most obvious example here: his previous battle for the Common Core education standards, which critics like Diane Ravitch undermined by terming such efforts a “billionaire boys club.”



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“The attack that ‘Why should you even have a say in setting the agenda?’—that has a certain resonance to it,” admits Gates. 



So why should billionaires get to choose what problems we’re solving? 



“Philanthropy is there because the government is not very innovative, doesn’t try risky things and particularly people with a private-sector background—in terms of measurement, picking great teams of people to try out new approaches,” says Gates. “Philanthropy does that.”



Philanthropy, as practiced by the Gateses, also takes risks in the existential terrain political leaders would rather bury their heads in. Bill Gates still worries about nuclear proliferation, an area his partner-in-crime Buffett has championed. He’s been the global leader on the risks around pandemics and also, to a lesser degree, climate change, where his $1 billion Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund makes big bets. 



Artificial intelligence looms on the horizon as the newest threat brought on by innovation. “In the long run,” says Gates, “AI is a tough problem.”



Notably, Gates does not feel that way about social media. Last century’s boy wonder, who faced scrutiny for what the federal government saw as Microsoft’s monopolistic tactics, clearly has empathy for this century’s boy wonder, Mark Zuckerberg, now a lightning rod for Facebook’s role in the erosion of democracy, as most recently outlined by Facebook investor Roger McNamee. 



“I think what Roger [McNamee] has said is completely unfair and kind of outrageous,” says Gates. “They’re blaming Mark for everything. I mean, Trump was not elected because of Facebook. They say ‘filter bubble.’ All these polarization things. … Well, be clear. I get to read whatever I want to read, I get to listen to right-wing radio, I get to listen to Fox News. You kill Facebook and I can still live in my filter bubble. But filter bubble is not just my Facebook feed, so acting like, ‘Hey Mark, wake up someday and solve the filter bubble problem.’ No, Roger McNamee has no practical solution to the filter bubble thing.” 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“They’re blaming Mark for everything. I mean, Trump was not elected because of Facebook.”</blockquote>



(“It’s hard when you’re in this vortex,” adds Gates. “I was in such a vortex once upon a time. A little bit different because mine was more of a court-related thing than the broad view of whether the software was good or not.”) 



Ultimately, Gates, whose net worth, even after large donations to the foundation, approaches $100 billion, views philanthropy as a vital force for good. And he thinks that potential critics—even a loony potential British prime minister—will come around to that view. 



“When I met with Jeremy Corbyn for the first time, does he view me as the billionaire guy who collected more money than he thinks anybody is supposed to collect?” recalls Gates. 



“Or does he view me as the philanthropist who’s helping improve Africa and hopefully learn about education? Fortunately he was very nice, he viewed me as the second. But I’m sure he had to hesitate: ‘This guy is one of those people that maybe there should be none of’.”



-Randall Lane, Forbes Staff

Tag: Bill Gates

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