Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be the second largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $69 billion in assets as of 2020. On his 43rd birthday, Bill Gates gave the foundation $1 billion. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. Key individuals of the foundation include Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffett, chief executive officer Mark Suzman, and Michael Larson.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in 2022
Headquarters complex in Seattle as seen from the Space Needle
Selwyn College, University of Cambridge
The "sanitation value chain" used by the Gates Foundation to illustrate their approach to sanitation, showing collection, transport, treatment and reuse.
William Henry Gates III is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and writer best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Gates in 2023
Gates (right) with Paul Allen seated at Teletype Model 33 ASR terminals in Lakeside School, 1970
MITS Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch (200 mm) floppy disk system whose first programming language was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC
Gates delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, January 2008.