Not Just Microsoft: Inside The $122 Billion Net Worth Of Bill Gates

With a net worth of $122 billion, Bill Gates is currently the world’s fourth richest person. The Microsoft co-founder has already vowed to donate all of his wealth and eventually drop off from the world’s richest people list.

But what does his mammoth net worth comprise? Does he earn entirely from Microsoft or does he have other income sources too? Well, yes. The billionaire’s $122 billion net worth comprises not just his Microsoft stake.

Inside Bill Gates’ Net Worth

As per Bloomberg, a majority of Bill Gates’ $122 billion net worth includes $59.4 billion cash, $20.6 billion worth of Microsoft equity. He has added over $13 billion to his net worth this year to date.

67-year-old Bill Gates is believed to own about $28.6 billion worth of Microsoft stock, i.e. a bit over 1% of the company, as per Forbes. Based on an analysis of Bloomberg data, Gates has received more than $56 billion in stock and dividends from Microsoft and other companies, including a $3.3 billion payout from Microsoft in 2004, which he donated to his philanthropic foundation.

The other big part of his more than $100 billion fortune is managed through closely held Cascade Investment, which has stakes in dozens of publicly traded companies, including Canadian National Railway, Deere and Ecolab. A big part of Bill Gates’s fortune is being derived from Cascade Investment. The private investment and holding company Cascade was incorporated in the United States, founded and controlled by Gates.

The value of Cascade is based on an analysis of asset sales and purchases, taxes and market performance. Market performance is based on a hybrid of indexes that capture sectors including hedge funds, bonds and equities. It includes the value of Cascade’s investments in closely held businesses, including real estate and energy assets. Cascade also owns stakes in dozens of public companies, which are valued individually using disclosed sharecounts.

Early Years Of Bill Gates’ Life

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Billionaire Bill Gates developed an interest in computers shortly after his admittance to Seattle’s Lakeside School. After scoring 1590 on his SATs (out of a possible 1600), he enrolled at Harvard University, where his Lakeside friend, Paul Allen, persuaded him to take a leave of absence to help him build an operating system for the Altair 8800, a new computer developed by Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems. The result: Microsoft, which is now the world’s largest software maker by revenue and a market cap of well over $2 billion.

In 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French, a Microsoft employee whom he had met seven years earlier at a press event in New York. As per Bloomberg, six years later, after his Microsoft stake topped $100 billion, Gates stepped down as the company’s chief executive and began focusing on philanthropic efforts through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He intends to give a majority of his wealth to charity, a commitment he reaffirmed by signing the Giving Pledge in 2010. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in November 2016.