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 former Microsoft security staffer has warned that cybercriminals are mass exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange email servers because organizations were not properly warned which systems to patch.



Many organizations appear not to have patched, which has led to mass exploitation of the vulnerabilities, warned Kevin Beaumont, who posted about the issues on his<a href="https://doublepulsar.com/multiple-threat-actors-including-a-ransomware-gang-exploiting-exchange-proxyshell-vulnerabilities-c457b1655e9c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;DoublePulsar blog</a>. Hundreds of U.S. government systems are exposed, he added, while the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) issued an&nbsp;<a href="https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2021/08/21/urgent-protect-against-active-exploitation-proxyshell" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alert</a>&nbsp;on Saturday.



“They are pre-authenticated (no password required) remote code execution vulnerabilities, which is as serious as they come,” he wrote.&nbsp;“Microsoft knew this would blow up in an international incident for customers. I know this because I worked there, and told people.” He noted that while Microsoft issued fixes five months ago, it hadn’t given the vulnerabilities standard identifying numbers to make it easier for users to determine what needed patching. “It created a situation where Microsoft’s customers were misinformed about the severity of one of the most critical enterprise security bugs of the year,” Beaumont added. (Microsoft hadn’t responded to a request for comment on Beaumont’s allegations at the time of publication.)



Among the hackers taking advantage of that is the ransomware group known as LockFile has been seen taking advantage of the flaws, which were first patched by Microsoft in March. LockFile has been linked to ransomware attacks on victims in various industries &#8211; including manufacturing, financial services, engineering and tourism -​​ around the globe, mostly in the U.S. and Asia, according to security company Symantec. It was first seen on the network of a U.S. financial organization on July 20, it wrote in a company&nbsp;<a href="https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/lockfile-ransomware-new-petitpotam-windows" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog post</a>.



The origins of the attacks can be traced back to weaknesses uncovered during a hacking contest earlier this year and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2021/8/17/from-pwn2own-2021-a-new-attack-surface-on-microsoft-exchange-proxyshell" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">detailed in full last week by Orange Tsai</a>. He found three weaknesses in Microsoft Exchange (the on-premise version, not Office 365), which, when combined, could be used to remotely take control of an email server.



Beaumont has now released a tool to help identify unpatched systems. It’s already been put to use by the national Computer Emergency Response Team in Austria to scan for vulnerable servers.



CISA said it “strongly urges organizations to identify vulnerable systems on their networks and immediately apply&nbsp;<a href="https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2021/05/11/microsoft-releases-may-2021-security-updates" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Microsoft&#8217;s Security Update from May 2021</a>—which remediates all three ProxyShell vulnerabilities—to protect against these attacks.”



Governments and private organizations across the world rely on Microsoft Exchange to run their day-to-day email, but this year it’s come under repeated attack with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2021/03/03/microsoft-issues-critical-update-warning-as-chinese-hackers-attack-exchange-servers/">devastating large-scale hacks</a>. They <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/07/19/us-nato-and-allies-accuse-china-of-hacking-microsoft">included attacks that the Biden administration pinned on China</a>, which the country denied.



By Thomas Brewster, Forbes Staff

Storefronts And General Views Of Cologne

Warning: ‘Extremely Serious’ Microsoft Vulnerabilities Hacked By Ransomware Criminals

Microsoft&#8217;s move to add the role of board chairman to CEO Satya Nadella&#8217;s duties at the technology giant bucks a growing trend of companies separating the two jobs.



The number of companies whose CEO also held the title of chairman has declined steadily over the past three years at U.S. companies of all sizes, from the megacap corporations in the S&amp;P 500 to the smaller firms in the Russell 3000 index, according to new research by the Conference Board and analytics firm ESGAUGE.



The trend seems to be more pronounced among smaller companies. Only 36% of Russell 3000 companies had the CEO also serve as chair in 2020. That&#8217;s down from 41% percent in 2016.



“The importance of having an independent board has pushed many organizations to adopt a separation model,” says Matteo Tonello from The Conference Board. “The strong leadership skill sets in CEOs of very large S&amp;P 500 companies may be the reason why these companies are more reluctant to have the role separation,” he added.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Providing better oversight of company management and avoiding the sorts of conflicts of interest that sunk companies like WorldCom and Tyco, have largely been the reasons behind the role separations.



In companies that give CEOs a chair role as a reward for proving themselves as leaders, the gap is typically closer to two years. Nadella’s predecessor, Steve Ballmer, never named chairman during his 14-year tenure as CEO of the software giant. For years, co-founder Bill Gates played that role. John Thompson became chairman when Nadella was named CEO in February 2014 and will return to his previous role of being lead independent director.&nbsp;



&nbsp;Microsoft rationalized Nadella&#8217;s promotion in a statement that suggested the board wanted a firmer focus on management priorities. “In this role, Nadella will lead the work to set the agenda for the board, leveraging his deep understanding of the business to elevate the right strategic opportunities and identify key risks and mitigation approaches for the board’s review,” said the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/microsoft-board-of-directors-announces-role-changes-and-quarterly-dividend-301314220.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement.&nbsp;</a>



&nbsp;The spotlight on the trend of CEOs serving as board chairs became more intense after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Along with sinking many Internet startups, the stock crash made investors more skeptical about the cult of personality around many company leaders. Scandals at companies like Tyco, Enron, and WorldCom only reinforced a key question: Where was the board?&nbsp; Separating the chairman and CEO role was seen as a critical step in reinforcing board independence.



The debate continued, intensifying again after the 2008 financial crisis. In February 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued rules requiring listed companies to disclose their leadership structure and explain why it was appropriate. That exercise, along with pressure from shareholders, proxy advisory firms, and regulators, has prompted a slow but steady trend towards separating the chair and CEO roles. As Peter Crist, chairman of search firm Crist | Kolder, notes, “once those roles are decoupled, it’s rare to go back.”



The exception is when a successful CEO wants that role — or it’s treated as a promotion for a job well done. Mary Barra at General Motors, for example, followed a fairly typical pattern in being named chair of GM two years after holding the CEO slot. What’s unusual about Satya Nadella is the fact that he was CEO for seven years before being named chairman. That could indicate some frustration or perceived issues with the board’s ability to navigate through the current environment.&nbsp;



“The chair has more power to control the agenda and set the stage for conversations in the boardroom,” says Crist. “A CEO may say, ‘I need to lead and educate the board’ to get things done.”&nbsp;



That said, Crist rarely supports such a move. “I’m a strong believer in separating the chair and CEO roles … Not many board members can stand up to a strong CEO. Look at compensation trends. When is  compensation going to trend down? Never. It’s important to have as much autonomy as possible … If you’re a high-performing company and the CEO is viewed as a critical element of success, investors will basically shrug their shoulders when a CEO gets named chair of the board.”



By Aayushi Pratap, Forbes Staff

Microsoft Holds Annual Shareholder Meeting

Nadella’s Appointment As Microsoft Chair Bucks Governance Trend

The man Warren Buffett expects to succeed him at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway is worth an estimated $484 million thanks to a stake in its privately held energy subsidiary, despite owning very little of Berkshire’s publicly traded stock.



At Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, Buffett’s longtime lieutenant Charles Munger made an off-handed comment that “Greg will keep the culture” as Berkshire grows more decentralized, suggesting that the company’s vice chairman, Greg Abel, will succeed Buffett as CEO. Buffett later confirmed to CNBC that Abel is the current choice to take over, saying, “The directors are in agreement that if something were to happen to me tonight, it would be Greg who’d take over tomorrow morning.”



Abel has been a leader at Berkshire since the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate bought MidAmerican Energy in 2000 when he was its president. He became CEO of the company now named Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 2008 and served in that role until becoming Berkshire’s vice chairman in 2018.



Abel owns a 1% stake in Berkshire Hathaway Energy, billionaire Walter Scott owns 7.9% and Berkshire Hathaway owns the remaining 91.1% of the company, according to BHE’s 2020 annual report. Berkshire repurchased $126 million worth of shares from Scott on March 5, 2020, according to its latest proxy statement, valuing BHE at $53.4 billion. That makes Abel’s stake worth an estimated $480 million (Forbes discounts ownership stakes in privately held companies).



Abel’s piece of BHE makes up the vast majority of his net worth, Forbes estimates. He owns only five Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares in a trust and 2,363 Class B shares as a custodian for members of his family, according to the proxy statement. With Class A shares worth more than $400,000 per share and Class B shares trading at $280 for share as of Monday’s market close, that stake is worth about $2.8 million.



Abel and Ajit Jain were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2018/01/10/warren-buffett-adds-energy-head-greg-abel-and-insurance-maestro-ajit-jain-to-berkshires-board/?sh=5355b5717c73">named vice chairmen</a>&nbsp;at the same time in 2018, prompting speculation that both were in contention to move into the top job. Jain, a 35-year Berkshire veteran, manages its insurance operations, and Abel oversees everything else. Jain owns $185 million worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares, some of which are held by a private foundation. Abel, 58, is 11 years younger than Jain, which Buffett reportedly cited as a contributing factor to the decision. “They’re both wonderful guys. The likelihood of someone having a 20-year runway though makes a real difference,” Buffett told CNBC.



Although he is among the youngest members of Berkshire’s board of directors, Abel’s stake in the public company still stands out as strikingly small. Buffett’s 248,734 Class A shares make up the bulk of the Oracle of Omaha’s $106 billion fortune. Munger’s shares are worth $1.9 billion, and early investor David Gottesman owns a $2.6 billion stake. All but two others on Berkshire’s 14-member board have stakes worth much more than Abel’s. A company spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.



But as an added bonus to his lucrative Berkshire Hathaway Energy stake, Abel is paid handsomely in his role as vice chairman. His base salary was $16 million in each of the last three years, according to Berkshire’s proxy statement, and he received $3 million bonuses in 2020 and 2019 and a $2 million bonus in 2018. Buffett and Munger’s base salaries are a mere $100,000 annually.



Abel also serves on the board of Kraft Heinz and owns 40,036 shares individually, worth about $1.7 million. Berkshire Hathaway orchestrated the 2015 megamerger of Kraft and Heinz after buying both food companies with Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital and is Kraft Heinz’s largest shareholder with a 26.6% stake.



By Hank Tucker, Forbes Staff

Inside The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Annual General Meeting

Just How Rich Is Warren Buffett Successor Greg Abel?

Microsoft’s $19.7 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence speech recognition company Nuance Communications, the software giant’s largest since its $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016, may signal a new binge of takeovers aimed at buttressing cash-rich Microsoft’s presence in an array of enterprise and consumer-facing businesses. Microsoft had a cash pile of more than $130 billion as of December. Its acquisition of Nuance, which pioneered the software behind Apple’s Siri virtual assistant and now focuses on speech recognition and automation for medical providers, shows the breadth of CEO Satya Nadella’s ambitions to expand beyond Microsoft’s core enterprise software business, analysts say.



“Nadella is on the M&amp;A warpath,” says Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “The next frontier for Microsoft is not just sitting on its success.”&nbsp;



Microsoft bought video game holding company ZeniMax Media, owner of the Doom and Wolfenstein game series, among others, for $7.5 billion in September. Before that, it tried to acquire parts of TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video sharing app, but lost out to software rival Oracle. And Microsoft is said to be in talks to buy Discord, a popular chat app, for more than $10 billion. Big winners in the Nuance deal include the speech recognition company’s largest investors, Vanguard Group, Viking Global Investors and ClearBridge Investments. The company’s three largest individual shareholders are executives at the company: Robert Weideman, an executive vice president who has been at Nuance since 2003, owns nearly 340,00 shares, worth $19 million in the transaction. Daniel Tempesta, chief financial officer and executive vice president, owns 293,550 shares, or $16.4 million. Mark Benjamin, who became chief executive officer of Nuance in 2018, owns just over 160,000 shares, worth $9 million in the deal.



While ZeniMax, TikTok and Discord are all plays in the consumer market — in which Microsoft lags behind other tech giants — Nuance is a deal to bolster its enterprise business. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, Nuance is the maker of speech recognition and artificial intelligence technology that has shifted its focus primarily to the healthcare sector, with over 60% of its revenue coming from that industry. Microsoft’s purchase of Nuance, announced Monday, includes $16 billion in cash and $3.7 billion in assumed debt. Nuance artificial intelligence technology could be applied to other industries for which Microsoft operates industry-specific clouds, including retail, manufacturing, financial services and nonprofits, says Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein &amp; Co.&nbsp; “The capabilities of what Nuance owns are applicable outside of the healthcare industry,” Moerdler says.



Enterprise software has been Microsoft’s crown jewel for some time. It has expanded beyond its Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office suite and its Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers by successfully establishing its foothold in cloud with Azure, its cloud computing service that now competes directly with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Its acquisition of LinkedIn makes it the operator of the most popular professional-oriented social network.



In a foreshadowing of its latest acquisition, Microsoft partnered with Nuance last year to launch Dragon Ambient Experience, a product that records and transcribes physician-patient conversations, automatically filling out electronic medical records. The product “was a solution for telehealth in response to the overwhelming increase in virtual visits sparked by the Covid-19 global pandemic,” a Nuance&nbsp;<a href="https://news.nuance.com/2020-04-20-Nuance-Launches-Dragon-Ambient-eXperience-for-Telehealth-Compatible-with-Any-Telehealth-Platform" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">press release</a>&nbsp;stated at the time. The next month, Microsoft announced it was building Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, which officially launched in October.&nbsp;



“When you look at the specific tech that Nuance brings in terms of speech recognition and conversational AI, Microsoft has been clearly heavily investing in that area for some time on its own,” says Jay Vleeschhouwer of Griffin Securities.&nbsp;



Some of the largest healthcare companies are Nuance customers, including Athena Health, John Hopkins School of Medicine, Cerner, Epic, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Yale New Haven Health. This gives Microsoft an opportunity to incorporate those clients and drive more traffic into Azure — an important strategy for the company, according to Michael Turits, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. “[Microsoft] is spending billions of dollars to build out Azure, and it is a factory. Now let’s fill up the factory.”&nbsp;



Some analysts say it was a blessing that Microsoft’s attempt to buy TikTok failed. “The best thing that ever happened for Microsoft is that deal not happening,” Ives said of Wedbush. “It would have just added uncertainty to Microsoft at a time when the company is firing in all cylinders.” The flurry of actual and attempted dealmaking shows that Microsoft wants to compete in consumer tech. “I believe they need to be more aggressive on the consumer side because that’s the area where they’re playing behind the eight ball,” he says.



Discord, a videogame-focused messaging platform, would be a consumer play for Microsoft that some analysts believe would mesh well with its gaming business. Microsoft has the console XBox, game streaming service XCloud, and a Netflix-for-gaming product called GamePass.



Future acquisition targets for Microsoft remain to be seen, but they are likely to be companies that can drive growth for the company’s current products, says Moerdler of Sanford C. Bernstein. “It’s not about buying a company because it’s growing well or buying revenue,” he says. “It’s buying things that can positively disrupt its own business.”



By Angel Au-Yeung, Forbes Staff

Day Two Of The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2020

Microsoft’s ‘Warpath’: The $19.7 Billion Buyout Of Nuance Communications Could Be The Start Of An Acquisition Spree

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 decoding="async" loading="lazy" 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

Microsoft said in an SEC filing this week that it will actively consider women and minority candidates to succeed CEO Satya Nadella, making it among the most explicit statements from a major tech company about CEO diversity to date.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h4>



In its annual proxy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312520272025/d31295ddef14a.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>, which was first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/19/microsoft-board-wants-to-find-women-minorities-who-could-replace-ceo.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">spotted</a>&nbsp;by CNBC, Microsoft said its board of directors “is committed to actively seeking highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool of potential CEO candidates.”



The statement does not indicate that Nadella is on his way out imminently—companies typically include statements in annual regulatory filings about CEO succession, but rarely do they include promises about diversity.



In the wake of the George Floyd protests over the summer, Microsoft pledged to double the number of Black managers and senior leaders in the U.S. by 2025—though that effort is under&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/10/06/us-labor-department-investigating-microsoft-over-its-commitment-to-increase-black-representation-in-workforce/#4b05646f5361">scrutiny</a>&nbsp;from the Justice Department.



According to its 2019 diversity&nbsp;<a href="https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE4aqv1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>, women constitute 29.2% of Microsoft’s workforce, Black employees 4.4%, Latinx 6.2% and Asian 33.3%.&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Critics have for years assailed the lack of diversity in corporate America. There are 32&nbsp;<a href="https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-ceos-of-the-sp-500/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">women</a>&nbsp;leading S&amp;P 500 companies and only 11% of S&amp;P 500 CEOs are ethnic minorities, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-are-there-still-so-few-black-ceos-11601302601" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wall Street Journal</a>. Advocates point to a multitude of reasons why, including a failure to train and keep minority talent for executive roles and a tendency to put women and underrepresented groups in charge of marketing or human resources, which don’t typically serve as springboards to CEO positions.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/10/14/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-calls-for-referendum-on-capitalism/#33bd8fb4f3db">Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Calls For ‘Referendum On Capitalism’</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/09/23/wells-fargo-ceo-apologizes-for-saying-theres-a-limited-pool-of-black-talent/#355b416e4622">Wells Fargo CEO Apologizes For Saying There’s A ‘Limited Pool Of Black Talent’ </a>(Forbes)



-By Rachel Sandler, Forbes Staff

Microsoft Is Looking For Women And Minority Candidates To Eventually Replace CEO Satya Nadella

THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST



After briefly becoming the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2020/08/31/elon-musk-100-billion-net-worth/#7d8e258880ed">fifth centibillionaire in the world</a> on Monday, August 31, Tesla CEO Elon Musk ended the week down $9.9 billion as tech companies — and their founders’ fortunes — took a hit.



While tech companies have largely been driving the stock market’s surge during the pandemic, heavyweights like Facebook and Amazon took a spill on Thursday and Friday during what some observers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd5804ef-94d0-45b4-9c2b-8fb7996ec5f6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">are calling a correction</a>. The S&amp;P 500 was down 2.3% for the week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Index fell 1.8%. Tesla stock started to falter on Wednesday,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/02/teslas-largest-outside-shareholder-reduces-holding-citing-portfolio-restrictions.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">after news broke that</a>&nbsp;its largest outside shareholder, Scottish investment firm Ballie Gifford, reduced its stake in the company. The stock ended the week down 5.5%.&nbsp;



Even with the decline, Musk is four times wealthier than he was a year ago, with a net worth of $87.9 billion. He is currently the fifth richest person in the world, $5.5 billion ahead of Warren Buffett.



The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, hit a milestone last week when he became the first person tracked by Forbes with a fortune that exceeded $200 billion. With Amazon shares worth 3% less than a week ago at the market close on Friday, Bezos’ fortune dropped  $5.8 billion to $193.5 billion. His ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott (net worth: $62.4 billion), is $2 billion poorer this week.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="594" height="425" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-46514" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1-300x215.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption>Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 6, 2019. (Photo by MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune fell $4 billion as Facebook shares dropped 3.7% in the past week. He’s been more vocal than ever before about political misinformation on the social media platform and announced steps to mitigate the problem. On Wednesday, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced a&nbsp;<a href="https://gizmodo.com/zuckerberg-drops-300-million-to-support-u-s-elections-1844921516" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$300 million donation</a>&nbsp;to support voting infrastructure, such as protective equipment for poll workers and polling place rentals. On Thursday, he said that Facebook would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/09/03/facebook-will-block-new-political-ads-in-the-week-leading-up-to-election-day/#30873f0b7950">block new political ads</a>&nbsp;during the week before Election Day, and flag posts in which a candidate tries to claim a premature victory.&nbsp;



Quicken Loans cofounder Dan Gilbert had a chaotic week as shares of the online mortgage lender’s parent company, Rocket Companies, soared midweek ahead of the company’s first earnings report since it went public in August. Although <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.thestreet.com/investing/rocket-rkt-earnings-mortgage-initial-public-offering" target="_blank">it reported strong profits</a>, the stock corrected itself and ended the week down more than 13%. As of Friday, September 4, Gilbert is worth $51 billion — $7.3 billion less than last week, but nearly eight times richer than he was a year ago.



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



HERE ARE THE BILLIONAIRES WHOSE FORTUNES FELL THE MOST THIS WEEK.



The net worth change is from close of markets Friday, August 28, to Friday, September 4.



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">1 | ELON MUSK</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$87.9 BILLION, DOWN $9.9 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH |&nbsp;TESLA



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">2 | DAN GILBERT</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$51 BILLION, DOWN $7.3 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | QUICKEN LOANS



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">3 | JEFF BEZOS</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$193.5 BILLION, DOWN&nbsp;$5.8 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES﻿



SOURCE OF WEALTH | AMAZON



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">4 |  STEVE BALLMER</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$72.9 BILLION, DOWN $4.1 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | MICROSOFT



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">5 | MARK ZUCKERBERG</h4>



NET WORTH | &nbsp;$103.8 BILLION, DOWN $4 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | FACEBOOK



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">6 | LARRY ELLISON</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$74.2 BILLION, DOWN $2.7 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | ORACLE



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">7 | AMANCIO ORTEGA</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$65.3 BILLION, DOWN $2.5 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;SPAIN



SOURCE OF WEALTH | ZARA



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">8 | MA HUATENG</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$57.5 BILLION, DOWN $2.3 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;CHINA



SOURCE OF WEALTH | TENCENT



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">9 | LARRY PAGE</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$70.6 BILLION, DOWN $2.2 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | GOOGLE



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading">10 | SERGEY BRIN</h4>



NET WORTH |&nbsp;$68.7 BILLION, DOWN $2.1 BILLION



COUNTRY |&nbsp;UNITED STATES



SOURCE OF WEALTH | GOOGLE



-Ariel Shapiro, Forbes Staff

Key Speakers At The Satellite 2020 Conference

Elon Musk Down Nearly $10 Billion In One Week As Tech Stocks Plunge

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates joined the battle against Alzheimer’s disease on Monday, when he announced a $50 million investment in UK-based Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), a venture capital fund. The investment is independent of his philanthropic work at the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will follow up his initial investment with an additional $50 million to be doled out to start-up ventures working on Alzheimer&#8217;s research, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-dementia-gates/bill-gates-makes-100-million-personal-investment-to-fight-alzheimers-idUSKBN1DD0S3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">he told Reuters. </a>
Dementia is something personal to him. “My dad will celebrate his 92nd birthday in a couple weeks, a milestone that was practically unimaginable when he was born,” Gates, wrote <a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Digging-Deep-Into-Alzheimers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">in a post</a> on his website, GatesNotes, on Monday. Gates did not say whether his father has dementia or not although he wrote that men in his family &#8220;have suffered from Alzheimer&#8217;s.&#8221; “Your risk of getting arthritis, Parkinson’s, or another non-infectious disease that diminishes your quality of life increases with each year. But of all the disorders that plague us late in life, one stands out as a particularly big threat to society: Alzheimer’s disease,” he added.
Although the number of studies investigating Alzheimer’s disease have grown in number over the past decade, scientists have not yet found a conclusive way to battle the disease, which is one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S.. Every 66 seconds, someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s, a rate expected to double by 2050, according <a href="https://www.alz.org/documents_custom/2016-facts-and-figures.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">to a 2016 study by the Alzheimer’s Association</a>. For those who live into their mid-80s, there is a 50% chance of developing the disease, which causes decline in memory, language, problem-solving and other cognitive skills, the nonprofit says. “That trend will likely continue as baby boomers age, which means that more families will watch their loved ones suffer from cognitive decline and slowly disappear,” Gates wrote in his post.
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In addition to its emotional burden, the disease also results in significant economic costs for families, caregivers and healthcare systems. In 2011, 15.2 million Americans provided unpaid care for their loved ones valued <a href="https://www.alz.org/documents/national/submitted-testimony-050113.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">at over $210 billion</a>, an Alzheimer’s Association statement from 2013 concluded. The same statement said that Alzheimer’s expenditure will reach a total of $20 trillion over the next 40 years. Americans will spend <a href="https://www.alz.org/documents_custom/2017-facts-and-figures.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$259 billion</a> caring for those with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia just in 2017, according to the association.
The DDF, whose board includes the UK government as well as pharmaceutical giants like Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer, has already invested in 12 ventures fighting Alzheimer’s in both the UK and the U.S. since it was founded in 2015. “We welcome Bill Gates’ involvement as we collaborate to solve one of the biggest issues in global healthcare,” Kate Bingham of healthcare venture capital firm SV Health, which manages DDF, said in a statement.
Along with his wife Melinda Gates and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, Bill Gates started the Giving Pledge in 2010 and committed to giving away more than half of his net worth in his lifetime. In October, he was unseated by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/10/31/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-richest-person-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as the world’s richest person</a> and will likely drop down the list in the near future, due to his philanthropic efforts.
“This is a frontier where we can dramatically improve human life,” the 62-year-old philanthropist said in a press release on Monday, “It’s a miracle that people are living so much longer, but longer life expectancies alone are not enough. People should be able to enjoy their later years – and we need a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s to fulfill that.” &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Deniz Cam</a>, FORBES STAFF

Bill Gates Is Investing $100 Million In Alzheimer’s Research, Citing Family History

In the summer of 2013, as Matthew Zeiler was close to finishing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence at New York University, he seemed to have every tech giant in the palm of his hand. Zeiler had left an internship with a Google AI group a few weeks earlier when he got a call from an unknown number while he was running along the Hudson River. It was Alan Eustace, then a senior vice president of engineering at Google, who had heard about Zeiler&#8217;s AI chops. Eustace wanted Zeiler to join permanently. To entice him, Eustace told him he would make an offer that was among the highest Google had ever made to a new graduate, Zeiler recalls. Zeiler won&#8217;t say how much he was offered, and Google declined to comment. But offers for top recruits with specific expertise can add up to several millions of dollars over four years, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Regardless, Google&#8217;s offer kicked off a bidding war for Zeiler and his know-how in deep learning, the vaunted branch of AI that&#8217;s driving major breakthroughs in computing.
Within days, Zeiler received a bigger offer from Microsoft, which Google promptly matched. Apple also wanted to chat, and when Zeiler flew out to Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg personally sought to persuade him to join a new AI research group at Facebook. Zeiler respectfully turned them all down, deciding instead to start a company with an audacious goal: to compete with the giants that were courting him. &#8220;It was a crazy period,&#8221; Zeiler remembers. &#8220;I had this low-risk opportunity of joining a tech giant versus doing my own startup.&#8221;
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Zeiler says he knew that some of his algorithms worked better than Google&#8217;s on certain AI problems. &#8220;I knew I had to follow my gut,&#8221; he says.
Four years later, Zeiler&#8217;s New York City-based startup, Clarifai, is widely seen as one of the most promising in the crowded, buzzy field of machine learning. Clarifai offers image- and video-recognition tools for developers that rival those from Google, Microsoft and others. Much as Stripe and Twilio make it easy for programmers to tap into payments and communications capabilities, Clarifai gives its customers access to cutting-edge AI techniques that would cost millions to replicate. Companies like Unilever, BuzzFeed, Ubisoft and Staples U.K., as well as makers of medical devices and drones, use Clarifai to automatically analyze millions of images and videos. One of the company&#8217;s 100 or so customers, i-Nside, makes a smartphone accessory for imaging the inside of an eardrum and diagnosing ear diseases. Revenue, while still small, is expected to reach $10 million as early as next year, according to people close to the company.
That Clarifai has made it this far is, in and of itself, remarkable. In the past few years, AI &#8211; in particular a form of it called deep learning or deep neural networks &#8211; has emerged as the Next Big Thing in tech. Deep-learning techniques work loosely like the brain, with layers of &#8220;neurons&#8221; connected with &#8220;synapses.&#8221; The techniques are leading to substantial breakthroughs in areas like image and speech recognition, which in turn are ushering in advances in everything from medicine to self-driving cars to robotics.
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But there&#8217;s a problem: Amid the scramble for talent, the richest companies in tech have consumed entire university departments and acquired just about every AI startup they could get their hands on. Google has been the hungriest, with at least 11 AI-related acquisitions, spending upwards of $1 billion for just two of those, DeepMind and api.ai. Nearly all the upstarts that competed with Clarifai have been bought: Amazon acquired Orbeus; Salesforce got MetaMind; IBM snapped up AlchemyAPI. When it comes to image recognition, Clarifai is perhaps the only one left that can compete with Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, all of which offer AI image-recognition tools to their cloud-computing customers. Clarifai has already rebuffed several multi-million-dollar acquisition offers, according to an early employee. Zeiler says he is determined to keep the company independent.
Clarifai has none of the might or reach of its rivals, but Zeiler insists, convincingly, that playing Switzerland in a global AI war is a valuable asset. Many large companies that want to incorporate AI into their products are fearful of handing over their data to giants like Google and Amazon. Photobucket is a case in point. After assessing competing tools from Amazon, Google and IBM, the image- and video-hosting service became one of Clarifai&#8217;s largest customers in terms of image volume. &#8220;Any time you&#8217;re dealing with Google, you have to wonder if they&#8217;re taking your data and training their own system,&#8221; says Mike Knowles, senior infrastructure developer at Photobucket. With its Photos app, Google competes with Photobucket. Zeiler says many other potential customers are at risk of colliding with the ever-expanding ambitions of tech&#8217;s biggest companies. &#8220;They open new divisions that compete with their customers,&#8221; Zeiler says. &#8220;That&#8217;s what we don&#8217;t do.&#8221;
At 30, Zeiler, who grew up in Beausejour, a small town in Canada some 40 miles northeast of Winnipeg, seems an unlikely challenger to tech&#8217;s powerhouses. With slicked-back hair that he cuts only a couple of times a year, he retains the disheveled air of a college student.
But Zeiler&#8217;s obsession with AI put him on a path to be mentored by some of the field&#8217;s biggest luminaries. Oddly enough, his interest in the field started with a video of a flickering flame that he saw while an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. The video, shown to him by a grad student, looked startlingly real, yet it was generated by a computer using an AI technique. Zeiler had just learned the basics of computer programming but hadn&#8217;t taken to it. The flame represented something different. No human had explicitly programmed it to move around in predetermined ways. Instead, a computer had been fed video data, deduced a pattern and generated the video on its own. &#8220;I was completely blown away,&#8221; Zeiler says. &#8220;It was a whole new way to get computers to do what you wanted. I had to learn more.&#8221;
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Graham Taylor, the Ph.D. candidate who had shown him the video, brought Zeiler into a research lab that was run by Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered one of the godfathers of neural networks. Taylor liked the ambitious yet amiable Zeiler. &#8220;He was smart but wasn&#8217;t a jerk,&#8221; Taylor says. In Hinton&#8217;s lab Zeiler worked on using AI techniques to track pigeons&#8217; mating rituals, resulting in his first paper, &#8220;Learning Pigeon Behaviour Using Binary Latent Variables.&#8221; He graduated at the top of his class.
Zeiler then headed to NYU for a Ph.D., following Taylor, who was a postdoctoral student there. Taylor worked under Yann LeCun, another pioneer in deep learning, who now heads Facebook&#8217;s AI efforts. Eventually, Zeiler did two internships at Google and worked for Jeff Dean, the head of a then-new deep-learning research group called Google Brain. Hinton, who now works at Google and retains a position at the university, was part of that 20-person AI skunkworks. (Google Brain has since grown into one of the most high-profile and vital groups within Google.)
Zeiler founded Clarifai in November 2013 after his second internship, just as he was finishing his Ph.D. The company got off to an auspicious start. Zeiler tested his image-recognition algorithms in a highly regarded contest called ImageNet. The 2012 ImageNet had shaken the AI world when a team from Hinton&#8217;s lab in Toronto, using deep-learning techniques, cracked a huge barrier in accuracy: Its error rate was 15%, far better than the 25% attained with earlier AI approaches. In 2013, Zeiler beat out the competition with an error rate of just 12%.
For the next few months, Zeiler worked alone, pushing the limits of his neural networks and rewriting the code to turn it into a commercially viable product. He installed four servers in his apartment to crawl the Web for images to train his algorithms. At one point, his apartment got so hot that he had to leave his windows open in the middle of winter. By April 2014, Zeiler hired a second employee, and the two moved the servers to a New Jersey data center, where Clarifai continues to expand. In October 2014, he made the service available to developers. His first customer was a wedding lifestyle website called Style Me Pretty, which uses Clarifai to identify and categorize thousands of user-uploaded pictures and serves ads based on what&#8217;s in an image.
In 2015, Clarifai landed its first sizable investment: a $10 million round led by Union Square Ventures. The corporate coinvestors, who clearly understood the potential of what Zeiler was building, included Qualcomm, AI chip specialist Nvidia and, interestingly, Google&#8217;s venture arm. The following year, in a round led by Menlo Ventures, Clarifai raised another $30 million, at a valuation of $120 million, according to PitchBook. &#8220;Tech giants are working on similar products, but they don&#8217;t wake up every day living and dying on building the best image-recognition service,&#8221; Menlo partner Matt Murphy says. Clarifai now has 55 employees, including 10 dedicated to digging through the latest AI research so the company can stay current. Last year, it hired a veteran sales executive from Google&#8217;s enterprise unit as its chief customer officer.
A recent study by the consulting firm CapTech shows Clarifai remains competitive with, and in some cases outperforms, tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft in image recognition. But finding and keeping AI talent to maintain that position&#8211;let alone expand into new areas like audio recognition and beyond&#8211;won&#8217;t be easy. In February, Clarifai scored a longtime Google AI researcher, Andrea Frome, as its head of research, but she abruptly departed after only four months. Frome declined to speak about her departure, and Zeiler says it was the result of differing priorities. Access to data&#8211;lots of it&#8211;to &#8220;train&#8221; algorithms is also an area where Clarifai is likely to find itself at a permanent disadvantage compared to its much-larger rivals.
Clarifai&#8217;s latest tool trains AI models on smartphones, not in the cloud, where most AI systems do the bulk of their computing. On a recent day, in a San Francisco hotel lobby, Zeiler pulls out his cracked iPhone 6. As he moves the camera, the phone identifies all the objects around it&#8211;chairs, a fireplace, people, cars, as well as a MacBook that Zeiler had just trained it to recognize. It&#8217;s a tantalizing demonstration of the potential for deep learning as it moves into the most important device in people&#8217;s lives. &#8220;We&#8217;re only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what these systems will be able to do,&#8221; Zeiler says. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Aaron Tilley</a>, FORBES STAFF

Battling Giants

In the last few months, three global tech giants have visited Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella; Facebook&#8217;s Founder, Mark Zuckerberg; and Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, have all set foot on Nigerian soil recently. Is Africa really becoming the future hub of global growth, as Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2016/09/01/africa-will-build-the-future-says-zuckerberg-visits-kenya-on-first-african-trip/#12517d6f70b2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">asserted</a>?
There are many indications this is so, and the rising focus on the continent’s digital economy is a clear pointer.
While everything is all about helping Africa progress up the ladder of digital opportunities, Google’s visit comes with a pledge to empower 10 million African youths with salient digital skills. &#8220;Thrilled that we&#8217;re expanding our digital skills program to train 10M Africans over the next 5 years #GoogleforNigeria,&#8221; Sundar announced on <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/890607610423947264" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a> while in Nigeria for the Google for Nigeria Conference at the end of July.
However, one might question the feasibility of this goal. Interestingly, Google has just completed an incredible test run with <a href="http://digifyafrica.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Digify</a>. In the last year, one million Africans (400,000 Nigerians, 300,000 South Africans, 200,000 Kenyans and 100,000 from other countries) have benefited from the initiative poised to entrench digital skills and technological innovations in the sub-Saharan region.
To understand what this means for Africa, here are some important programs/plans to be aware of:
<ol>
<li>Training of 100,000 software developers</li>
</ol>
If Digify has exposed a million young Africans to various digital skills, as stated by Google South Africa country director, Luke Mckend, new plans are now in place to take things a notch higher.
In the next five years, Google plans to prepare 10 million African youth for &#8220;jobs of the future&#8221;. More importantly, the tech giant will be training 100,000 software developers. “We’ll also be providing mobile developer training to 100,000 Africans to develop world-class apps, with an initial focus on Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa,” says Google.
<ol start="2">
<li>Google grants</li>
</ol>
Funding is a tough challenge faced by start-ups everywhere. In Africa, it’s even tougher. Concerned about this, Google is committing $20 million to causes targeted at improving lives across Africa and $2.5 million initial grants, in particular, to the non-profit arms of African start-ups, <a href="http://www.gidimo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gidi Mobile</a> and <a href="https://www.siyavula.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Siyavula</a>.
Google is doing this “to provide free access to learning for 400,000 low-income students in South Africa and Nigeria” and enable them to develop new digital learning tools that would be enjoyed by other users for free.
<ol start="3">
<li>Launchpad Accelerator Africa</li>
</ol>
There’s a strong nexus between “future jobs” and the “future of Africa.” And the boggling aspect of it is the dependence of the latter on the former. As it is, Africa needs to maximize the exponential potential of technology and tech entrepreneurship more.
With Launchpad Accelerator, Google plans to support African entrepreneurs in building successful technology companies and products. This initiative, according to Google, will provide more than $3 million in equity-free funding, mentorship, working space and access to professional advisers to more than 60 African start-ups over three years.
<ol start="4">
<li>YouTube Go</li>
</ol>
Data cost is a major hiccup in Africa’s Internet of Things. From one country to the other, there are continuous agitations for low data cost to foster internet activities. Luckily, Google is here to help in a way.
With YouTube Go – a new app that will make watching videos with a slower network a possibility – users now have control over the amount of data used on streaming or saving videos. This means watching YouTube videos won’t be as expensive.
<ol start="5">
<li>Faster web results</li>
</ol>
The previous points are great, but not enough if the benefit is exclusive to YouTube. Great news: Google is giving an additional offer.
“We previously launched a feature that streamlines search results so they load with less data and at high speed. Today we’re extending that feature to streamline websites you reach from search results, so that they load with 90% less data and five times faster, even on low storage devices,” says Google on giving a better experience for users with 2G-like connections or low storage devices.
The benefits for Africa
Let’s put everything into context…
Africa’s growing demography has huge potential. Yet, it’s a cause for alarm. According to recent statistics, there are only between 3 and 4 million jobs created annually in a continent that will have the world’s largest population of youth (1.1 billion) by 2034. Apparently, the creation of thousands of millions of jobs is urgent.
But not just jobs. Africa needs “future jobs” that will meet future needs.
Given this demand, in an evolving digital world, acquiring the skillsets that will empower Africa’s innovative minds and consequently help them grow businesses, create jobs, and boost their respective economies is a viable way to make Africa the true future of global growth. &#8211; Written by Shakir Akorede, writer and founder of <a href="http://501words.net" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">501Words</a>

What The Google CEO’s Visit To Nigeria Means For Africa

The last few years have seen an unprecedented number of people rushing to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android. But looking at the installed user base on each platform and information on the payouts made by the different companies, it appears that the vast majority of developers will find themselves with little revenue to show for.
Google, Apple, Microsoft : Rich in users, developers
The consensus around the industry is that Google dominates the mobile market with 900 million users, while Apple follows with 600 million iOS devices purchased, and Microsoft comes in third place with an estimated 12 million Windows Phones sold (the vast majority of those, 81%, being sold by Nokia).
With different forums aimed at attracting developers, each company handles announcing the size of their markets differently.
Apple, at its WorldWide Developer Conference, talked about 1.25 million apps in the app store accounting for 50 billion downloads and $5 billion paid off to developers in the last year. To the company, it is a sign of pride to be able to pay this developer community. Internal data from the app store, gathered from sources close to the company, indicate that the numbers are in line with the actual payments made to developers.
At Google I/O, the largest Android developer conference, Google touted 150,000 developers responsible for over 800,000 apps. While the company does not break out revenue numbers on their apps, recent data in their financial filings seemed to indicate somewhere around $900 million in pay-outs to developers “over the last 12 months” and discussions with external research analysts put the number of downloaded apps from the Google Play store at around 48 billion, close to what Apple has claimed.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been claiming 160,000 apps in their store from 45,000 developers. In a recent interview, Microsoft officials claimed that the average user downloaded 54 apps, which would put their download count at 650 million to date. While the company does not break out data for its mobile division, looking at the variations in the accounts payable line of their 10-Qs over the last few quarters before and after they introduced their app store shows a variation of up to $100 million since 2011 that could be attributed to the app store.
So taking all that data into account, we can summarize it as follows:
Looking at this, it is clear that Apple is winning the game in terms of total number of apps and money paid to developers. But lost in the shuffle is how much money developers can actually make on those platforms.
Meager dollars per download
Taking the data in front of us, we can get a sense of how many apps the average developer creates and what kind of revenue a developer can expect from those apps, on ave-rage (granted, power laws dictate that a small number of developers will do extremely well while the vast majority will fail, but we’re trying to look at averages here).
Based on this, the average developer on those platforms is pretty busy, developing 3 to 5 apps depending on the platform. Interestingly, Android is the big winner on downloads for a given app but this is largely offset by substantially lower revenue, with the average app download bringing in around 2 cents to its developer; Apple fairs 5 times better, bringing in a dime for every one of the 40,000 potential app downloads a developer could strive for. But the interesting thing is that Microsoft’s platform may be substantially more rewarding for its developers, bringing in $.15 per download (a fact that is offset by download numbers shown to be only 10 percent of what the other platforms can offer).
With the average paid app retailing for $.99, what we see here is the direct impact of free apps on those marketplaces. Android’s substantial lead in offering free apps cuts deeply into the average revenue paid out to developers while the smaller availability of free apps on the Windows platform may work to its advantage.
But what does that mean in terms of actually revenue?
Impact on developers’ wallets
Multiplying the average revenue per app by its average number of downloads, we can get a sense as to what an average developer can expect to make on an app today. Taking the same number and multiplying it by the number of apps an average developer creates, we get a sense of the revenues one can pull from going that way:
What we see here is that while decent amounts of money can be made on an app, a hard-working developer on iOS will be able to get a new car, while Android and Microsoft developers will be forced into the used car market if they plan to take those earnings on the road. At $4,000 in average revenue per app, Apple has a lead but it still begs the question as to how many developers can actually make a living directly from apps on any platform. Direct revenue from the apps themselves may not be able to justify large development teams but other revenue sources (advertising, for example) may help developers increase their take.
Of course, these are average values and many hope to find the next big hit, the one that will be on the higher end of the median. But for every app that goes north of those numbers, the average for the remaining apps drop.
Where are the opportunities?
There is, however, some hope. While Apple has developed a rich market for developers, Google and Microsoft both have opportunities to improve. For Google, the focus should be on improving the numbers by helping developers monetize their apps so they can come more in line with what Apple can offer. Even if they only reached half of what Apple does in terms of revenue per download, they would be able to match the revenue developers make. For Microsoft, the story is all about the number of users. If they were to manage their average revenue per app while growing their user base, they could potentially out-earn all the other platforms.
In all three cases, however, there is much work to be done to increase monetization of free apps. And that may be the next growth opportunity for any developer as it presents an opportunity that is substantially larger than the existing one.
Every app developer hopes to build the next big hit but, as is the case for any hit-driven market, a large group will be left behind with little to show for their efforts. At the end of the day, the model for mobile apps is no different than any other of the past: whether it is gold in the Yukon, websites in the 1990s, or app developers today, larger amounts of revenue will go to those who enable development than to those who are doing the development. Levi Strauss made his fortune selling picks and shovels to gold prospectors; Adobe, Amazon, and Google made theirs enabling web developers; and as the mobile revolution takes hold, some new players will emerge providing tools to create apps and those may be the biggest winners.

Tag: Microsoft

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