Bill Gates, the founder of the software behemoth, Microsoft, has become the world’s richest man, surpassing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and reclaiming the title that he lost to Bezos in 2018.
Bezos had dethroned Gates as the world’s richest man in 2018, with a net worth of $160 billion.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates is now worth $110 billion, narrowly beating Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is estimated at $109 billion.
While Bill Gates stopped working full-time at Microsoft over a decade ago in 2008 and stepped down as the Chairman in 2014, he still holds a majority stake at the organization. In October this year, Microsoft also won a Pentagon cloud computing defence contract worth $10 billion. The primary reason for Gates to have reclaimed the top spot is that Microsoft shares are up 48 per cent this year, a fact that has helped boost the value of the company.
In contrast, Jeff Bezos has seen a drop in his fortune due to Amazon’s lacklustre performance in the third quarter of this year. Also, his divorce with his wife McKenzie Bezos cost him $35 billion.
Of late, however, Gates has invested much of his time and resources in his philanthropic initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which seeks to reduce poverty, promote education, and improve healthcare in the world. The foundation is also known to be the biggest private philanthropic organization in the world.
Close to 25 years ago, in 1995, Bill Gates was first named the richest man in the world with a net worth of $12.9 billion.
Third on the list is French business magnate Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy. He is the only businessman not from the United States of America in the top five. Arnault is followed by the Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett at number four and the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg at the fifth spot.
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