William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist.
In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the world’s largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books.
Starting in 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, again in 2009, and has been since 2014. Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from $40 billion to more than $82 billion. Between 2013 and 2014, his wealth increased by $15 billion. Gates is currently the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $81.7 billion as of October 2016.