Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates is making good on her $1 billion commitment toward women’s health and empowerment causes.
The Action for Women’s Health challenge she announced last year drew to a close on Wednesday—and more than 80 nonprofits walked away with funding totaling some $250 million.
“I want to see women everywhere making decisions, controlling resources, and shaping policies and perspectives—but women can’t do well unless they can be well,” French Gates said in a statement.
The awardees each received grant funding in sums ranging from $1 million to $5 million. They are nonprofits and non-governmental organizations headquartered everywhere from Australia and the U.S. to Uganda and South Africa. They address a range of issues, including offering free mental health services for survivors of domestic violence in Washington, D.C.; training indigenous birthworkers to provide culturally appropriate care in Alaska; and combatting teen pregnancy, HIV, and sexual violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 65 percent of winners are community-run organizations working within their home countries.
“We believe the best agents for change are those closest to the challenges,” Lever for Change CEO Cecilia Conrad said in a statement. Pivotal, the group of impact organizations French Gates founded in 2015, funded the initiative and Chicago-based nonprofit Lever for Change managed it. They issued an open call last year to nonprofits working to advance women’s physical and mental health globally. More than 4,000 organizations from 119 countries applied.
“These 80+ organizations have proven that when it comes to improving women’s health, progress is possible and solutions exist,” French Gates said. “We hope this funding will help them expand their lifesaving, life-changing work, scale their impact, and reach millions more women around the world.”
French Gates stepped away from her role at the Gates Foundation in June 2024 following her 2021 divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Still, she pledged to continue her work to empower women and improve global health outcomes with the some $12.5 billion she received when leaving the foundation. Shortly before her departure, French Gates announced she would donate $1 billion over the course of two years specifically to systemic issues facing women and families. The Action for Women’s Health challenge was just one part of that pledge.
The next day, she sent Epstein a link to an article in Commentary about Trump’s election and the American economy. “Good article for trump to see,” she wrote.
On March 4, Melanie messaged Epstein. “Bg meets w trump march 20/21,” in apparent reference to Gates. (Gates did indeed meet with Trump at the White House on March 20, 2017. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the meeting was about combatting disease outbreaks around the world.)
“A waste of time,” replied Epstein. “he should meet with barrack,” in an apparent reference again to the current US ambassador to Turkey.
On March 6, Epstein and Melanie continued messaging about Trump and Gates.
“Israel – tell bill Paris week of 21,” Epstein wrote, in apparent reference to a supposed peace meeting regarding the situation in the Middle East.
“Peace mtg? W Jared and Tony Blair and all those folks? Not sure bg interested in peace process mostly technologies,” replied Melanie. “He says he speaks to Jared a lot”
“No peace boring and not happening. GROW UP,” Epstein replied.
(While there didn’t appear to be a peace meeting in Paris in March 2017, on March 10, days after these messages were sent, Trump had his first ever phone call with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and invited him to visit the White House.)
In their messages on March 6, Melanie reminded Epstein that the meeting was taking place between Gates and Trump later that month.
Epstein appeared to then claim a meeting was taking place at his house to discuss a myriad of issues related to Israel, including, he said in a message to Melanie, “Money surveillance, offense. It’s at my house so I would know.” It’s unclear if the meeting took place, or who attended if it did.
“Omg INVITE ME,” writes Melanie. “Can try to invite bg depending on guest list etc – Larry told him he couldn’t have contact w you so would have to manage that carefully.” (This is an apparent reference to Larry Cohen, Gates’ longtime associate. Cohen is the CEO of Gates Ventures and did not reply to a request seeking comment.)
“Not a problem for me,” writes Epstein. “I like bill . He gets more from me than I get from him. He should grow some balls and start to love.”
Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates just wrote a surprising new blog post on climate change. The upshot of the lengthy memo goes something like this: Climate change is likely to hurt the world’s most vulnerable—but won’t pose a catastrophic risk to civilization, so it’s time to focus on quality of life rather than emissions cuts or temperature rise.
The blog was penned in the run up to the United Nations’ global climate conference COP30, which will take place in Brazil in mid-November, and represents a different tone from Gates’s past commentary on climate change. It also comes amid sweeping cuts to foreign aid and open hostility about climate change from the Trump administration.
“Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been,” Gates wrote. “Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.”
The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder has long been a major advocate for climate change mitigation and investment in related technologies. He has invested billions in climate-related causes through his Gates Foundation, which he announced earlier this year will sunset in 2045. (In a blog post on the subject, he wrote that he wanted to accelerate his philanthropy in an effort to give away a bulk of his fortune within 20 years, rather than extending the life of the organization for decades after his death.)
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He also co-founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to find, incubate, and invest in promising companies and projects. The venture capital arm of the organization, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, counts as portfolio companies such businesses as battery recycling company Redwood Materials, sustainable aviation company ZeroAvia, and nuclear fusion company Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The organization has not been immune from broader economic and political changes: It cut “dozens” of staff, according to March reporting from The New York Times.
In his post, Gates, who is 70, wrote that the “doomsday view of climate change,” which sees it as having the potential to cause civilizational collapse, is not actually correct. He added that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future,” thanks to projections that show greenhouse gas emissions declining in coming years., and that “innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further” with supportive policy and investment.
“Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” he added. “It’s not too late to adopt a different view and adjust our strategies for dealing with climate change.”
That “different view” entails foregoing measuring success in terms of temperature rise, and instead looking at the impact of climate change on human welfare. He called on COP30 attendees to adopt that approach, and outlined two priorities when thinking about climate change. The first entails investing in innovation to eliminate the premium on pricing for cleaner technologies, particularly in difficult-to-abate sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation. Second, he emphasized using data to inform which investments are doing the most to save lives and improve quality of life for the most people—and then focus on those.
“Vaccines are the undisputed champion of lives saved per dollar spent,” he wrote, as an example. “And vaccines become even more important in a warming world because children who aren’t dying of measles or whooping cough will be more likely to survive when a heat wave hits or a drought threatens the local food supply.”
The World Meteorological Organization confirmed 2024 was the hottest year on record with global mean temperatures exceeding the 1.5 degrees celsius benchmark established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. And U.N. secretary general António Guterres said last week that overshooting the temperature goal “is now inevitable,” the BBC reported. Given those developments, stepping away from metrics on climate progress such as temperature rise and emissions cuts may seem drastic. But Gates’s repositioning comes with some key context.
Vaccine access has always been a top priority for Gates. But earlier this year, the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and cut future funding for Gavi, a global vaccine alliance responsible for vaccinating more than one billion children. Gates discussed his anxieties over the reduction in funding in his blog.
“COP30 is taking place at a time when it’s especially important to get the most value out of every dollar spent on helping the poorest,” he wrote. “The pool of money available to help them—which was already less than 1 percent of rich countries’ budgets at its highest level—is shrinking as rich countries cut their aid budgets and low-income countries are burdened by debt.”
Furthermore, the Trump administration has made no secret of its hostility toward climate change, but continues to position itself as favoring reindustrialization and innovation. Biden-era bills like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, however, have demonstrated that clean energy and climate tech go hand-in-hand with those objectives.
Another priority of the Trump administration, noted in an executive order the president signed on his first day in office, is “unleashing American energy.” While stopping short of endorsing fossil fuels, Gates did echo some of Trump’s points when he wrote that “from the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth.” He did, however, temper it by noting that “what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment,” given that the world still doesn’t have the means to meet growing energy demand without also spiking emissions.
“We will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale,” he wrote.
Speaking of innovation, Gates also mentioned the tech issue of the moment: AI. He wrote that he feels confident that AI will accelerate progress and innovation for companies working on climate solutions.
Gates’s shift in tone may be strategic for another reason, as well. Research has increasingly found that young people respond better when climate change is reframed in a more positive, solutions-oriented way. A 2019 research paper identified three different mechanisms of coping with climate anxiety. Whereas one strategy entailed withdrawing from climate discourse in favor of emotional self-soothing, two other strategies—problem-focused and meaning-focused coping—were found to lead more often to climate action. Meaning-focused coping in particular was associated with resilience and entailed a reframing of the problem in a more positive light and placing trust that society will do its part.
Experts seem divided on the memo. The director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development told ABC News the memo was “pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing.” A Stanford University climate scientist said it is worth considering whether climate change discourse is too pessimistic, but that stakeholders should continue to think longterm about investment in climate change mitigation. And a Princeton expert told ABC that humanity’s welfare can be the top priority in climate-related policy without being the only one.
Gates told The New York Times that while he expects the blog to be controversial, he doesn’t see it as a reversal. And in bold font, for emphasis, he wrote: “To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”
The Giving Pledge was designed to hold the world’s richest people accountable for donating at least half their fortunes in their lifetimes or wills–but so far, only John and Laura Arnold have actually done it.
From well-known Wall Street energy trader to philanthropist, John Arnold began his career trading natural gas at Enron and later ran a hedge fund, Centaurus Partners. By 2012, he had retired and fully pivoted to philanthropy at 38 years old.
The Arnolds have donated over $2 billion to date, and more than $204 million in 2024, according to Forbes. Currently, their net worth is around $2.9 billion, meaning their donations amount to about 42 percent of their wealth.
In addition, John Arnold has a Forbes philanthropy score of 5 out of 5. The score is based on those who have donated more than 20% of their wealth.
Since launching their foundation, “Arnold Ventures,” in 2008, their philanthropic efforts have expanded to 150 employees across offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Houston.
How the Arnolds donate
John and Laura Arnolds’ approach to giving is data-driven, aiming to deliver real, measurable results from what they offer, and has been fundamentally focused on research. Their efforts include a variety of public policy issues, including health care, higher education, criminal justice, infrastructure, and more.
Emphasizing research and measurable outcomes, their philanthropy also reflects a broader belief that wealth should be used in real time—not preserved for future generations. In fact, John Arnold has previously noted that The Arnolds will not have a legacy foundation after their deaths.
Most recently, “Arnold Ventures” joined the American Institute for Boys and Men to issue a call for new research on the long-term consequences of online sports betting as states continue to legalize the practice.
The Giving Pledge
Launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, the Giving Pledge invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to publicly commit to giving away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Some of the signers include Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (but not Jeff Bezos), Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, George Lucas, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Despite hundreds of billionaires signing the Giving Pledge, they haven’t necessarily followed through. The pledge is a moral commitment rather than a legally binding contract—participants sign an open letter explaining their reasons for giving. They can choose which causes and charities to support.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2025 report, The Giving Pledge at 15, highlights that Laura and John were the only participants technically in compliance with the pledge since signing in 2010.
“The Arnolds should be commended, they’ve boldly decided to give and to study how philanthropy can actually move money out the door instead of sequestering wealth. They’re among the most significant players in the Giving Pledge class when it comes to pushing real charity reform,” report co-author Bella DeVaan told Fortune in an interview.
Among the 22 deceased U.S. Pledgers, only eight met their pledge before death—just one, Chuck Feeney, gave away his entire fortune while alive.
Furthermore, of the original 57 U.S. signers in 2010, 32 remain billionaires, with their net worth increasing by almost 300% since signing. Only 11 of the original group are no longer billionaires—but it’s mainly because their net worth dropped, not because they gave it away.
“Wealth is accumulating incredibly quickly for the wealthiest people in America,” DeVaan added. The Giving Pledge is one of the few public commitments they make in lieu of stronger federal regulation or taxation—so its fulfillment is really important.”
John Arnold recently defended The Giving Pledge on X following a Fortune report about Peter Thiel saying he encouraged Elon Musk to abandon it due to concerns that his wealth would be donated to “left-wing nonprofits.”
“The multitude of billion-dollar fortunes, whether in the 1s, 10s, or 100s, have the potential to be put to enormous benefit,” Arnold wrote. “I won’t offer unsolicited advice as to what I think someone should do with their money. I’d only suggest that figuring out what to do with it in a productive fashion can be as important as trying to make more.”
Starting a business doesn’t always go so smoothly. More than 20 percent of businesses fail in their first year, with nearly 50 percent closing their doors in the first five years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while those numbers aren’t as bad as the oft-cited myth that half of all startups close their doors in the first year, there’s still a significant chance of failure.
For some founders, the failure of a startup is a one-and-done thing. The thought of taking that sort of risk again, both financially and emotionally, is too daunting. Failure doesn’t make you persona non grata in the funding world, though. In some cases, it can be considered a good thing to venture capitalists. In fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs in history have stumbled or flopped before, they went on to launch businesses that had a much greater degree of success.
Here’s a look at five founders who didn’t get things quite right in their first run at entrepreneurship.
Reid Hoffman
Before finding success with LinkedIn, Hoffman tried launching another sort of social media site in 1997. SocialNet was basically a Facebook/Match mashup before either of those sites existed. It was designed as a place to meet and make friends online (and, should you want, to date them). There weren’t as many people using the Internet then, though, and the technology was too rudimentary to foster those connections. It shut down in 2000—and Hoffman refunded all of the capital the company’s investors put into it. After joining the founding team atPayPal, he founded LinkedIn in 2002, eventually taking it public in 2011 before it was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016.
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Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs experienced failure in a way that’s much different than the other founders in this list. Apple was a hit from the start, but nine years after he co-founded the company, he was famously forced out in 1985 following a power struggle with John Scully. He went on to found NeXT, a tech company focused on workstations for higher education facilities. It flopped – and Apple bought the company in 1997 and brought Jobs back as CEO of Apple. The failures of NeXT and his ejection from Apple had given him a new perspective, though, which helped him shape the company into the $3.67 trillion powerhouse it is today.
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Jobs told graduates at Stanford University in 2005. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Four years before Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, the duo teamed up on another company. Traf-O-Data was meant to take the raw data from traffic counters along a state or city’s roads and automatically create reports for traffic engineers. (The duo used a computer at the University of Washington to do so.) “We ended up being okay successful, not seriously successful,” Gates later said in a 1993 interview with the Museum of American History. The State of Washington eventually offered free processing of the data for cities, which put an end to Traf-O-Data, but Allen and Gates both said the experience they gained with that company was critical when they decided to launch Microsoft.
Travis Kalanick
The third time was definitely the charm for Uber founder Kalanick. His first company, in the early 2000s, was Scour, a peer-to-peer file-sharing company. Before long, though, Scour faced a $250 billion copyright infringement suit from the entertainment industry and filed for bankruptcy. Next up was Red Swoosh, a content delivery network. That company struggled, but was eventually acquired in 2007 by Akamai Technologies. Two years later, Kalanick co-founded Uber, which revolutionized the transportation industry. Kalanick was forced out as CEO in 2017 after a series of workplace scandals revolving around a toxic work environment. These days, Kalanick is onto another venture, having acquired CloudKitchens, which provides commercial kitchen space to food delivery companies. He serves as CEO.
Michele Jawando serves as president of the Omidyar Network. Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media
Some of the nation’s largest philanthropic players are banding together with one goal in mind: ensuring Silicon Valley isn’t the only force shaping how A.I. impacts society as the technology becomes increasingly embedded in areas like labor, education and art. The new initiative, called Humanity AI, will see ten foundations commit at least $500 million over the next five years to that mission.
Humanity AI will be co-chaired by the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic venture established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar that has committed nearly $2 billion over the past 21 years, and the 55-year-old MacArthur Foundation, which has awarded more than $8.27 billion to some 10,000 recipients since its establishment.
“The message I want to resonate far and wide is this: A.I. is not destiny, it is design,” said Michele Jawando, president of the Omidyar Network, in a statement. “The decisions we make now about who builds A.I., who benefits from it, and whose values shape it will determine whether it amplifies human needs or erodes them.”
Foundations joining the coalition must commit to making grants in at least one of Humanity AI’s five priority areas: equipping workers for an A.I.-driven economy; protecting artists from theft; addressing security risks in sectors such as climate and energy; promoting democracy; and supporting thoughtful integration of A.I. in education.
A pooled fund of grants will be managed by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which expects to begin distributing funds early next year.
The initiative’s wide-ranging goals are reflected in its diverse roster of members. The Mellon Foundation, for instance, is known for championing the arts and humanities; the Kapor Foundation focuses on making the tech ecosystem more equitable; and the Lumina Foundation works to boost U.S. economic prosperity through education. Other founding members include the Doris Duke Foundation, Ford Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment and David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Big Philanthropy takes on A.I.
This isn’t the first time major U.S. foundations have teamed up to mitigate A.I.’s risks. In 2023, several of Humanity AI’s current members—including the Omidyar Network, MacArthur Foundation and Ford Foundation—launched a $200 million initiative aimed at funding A.I. projects that promote the public interest and responsible use.
More recently, in July, a separate philanthropic coalition led by billionaires Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Charles Koch announced NextLadder Ventures, a $1 billion initiative to use emerging technologies to expand economic opportunity. That effort will prioritize providing A.I.-based tools to frontline workers and people facing job or housing instability.
Humanity AI, meanwhile, hopes to grow its coalition in the coming months. “The stakes are too high to defer decisions to a handful of companies and leaders within them,” said John Palfrey, president of the MacArthur Foundation, in a statement. “Humanity AI seeks to shift that dynamic by resourcing technologists, researchers and advocates who are united by a shared vision of ensuring A.I. is a force for good, putting people and the planet first.”
Before David Risher was tasked with scripting a “comeback story” for ride-sharing company Lyft, he made a career move so audacious that it prompted a direct, and blunt, intervention from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In a recent appearance on Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast, Risher shared the moment Gates told him he was making “the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard anyone made.”
The year was 1996, and Risher was enjoying a successful career at Microsoft during the heyday of Windows. In fact, Risher noted he and his wife just had their 30th wedding anniversary, having met “on the first day” at Microsoft. He said it was a very formative time for him and his career at a very competitive company.
But he had been in talks with a man named Jeff Bezos, who was running a brand-new startup called Amazon. When Risher decided to leave the tech giant to join the fledgling online retailer, Gates himself sent an email and called him into his office.
“He says, ‘Hold on for a second. You mean to tell me you’re leaving this company for some tiny, little internet bookstore that nobody’s ever heard of … that has got to be the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard anyone made,’” Risher recalled.
While Risher admitted the move wasn’t “entirely rational,” he said he was drawn to the opportunity. He had first connected with Bezos a year earlier, when the Amazon founder was conducting a reference check. What ultimately convinced Risher to take the leap was Bezos’s intense focus on the customer. “He was very customer-obsessed,” Risher said, noting Bezos’s logic that on the internet, “everyone is one click away from somebody else, so you have to create a great customer experience.” (In fact, Bezos’s management style stressed to Amazonians that they should approach every day from a “day one” mindset.)
Bezos also laid out a compellingly ambitious vision: to grow the then-$15.6 million business into a billion-dollar company by the year 2000. Risher, an avid reader, was captivated by the chance to build something new at the “crazy intersection of technology and culture.” He joined Amazon as its 37th employee, tasked with helping build the “everything store” by adding music, video, and toy categories. The company hit its billion-dollar target a year early, in 1999. The move paid off so well that a “Thank You” letter from Bezos to Risher, dated February 2002, remains on Amazon’s website to this day.
One of the great comebacks
Now, as CEO of Lyft, Risher is applying that same foundational principle of customer obsession to engineer what he hopes will be “one of the world’s great comeback stories.” He said when he took the job in 2023, the company had “lost its way” a little bit, as it was losing market share, and it wasn’t profitable. (Lyft stock is down roughly 20% over the last five years, but has risen 60% year-to-date.) Risher’s strategy has been to return to the basics: understanding what customers actually want.
To achieve this, he famously works “undercover” as a Lyft driver in Napa Valley and San Francisco to learn firsthand about the rider and driver experience. A conversation with a passenger stressed by variable pricing led directly to the creation of Lyft’s “Price Lock” feature. He insists on viewing drivers as customers, too, which led to a 70% earnings guarantee—ensuring drivers always receive at least 70% of what riders pay, a move that has given Lyft a 19-point advantage in driver preference over competitors.
This obsessive focus on improving the service is part of Risher’s fight against what he calls “enshittification,” borrowing the phrase from Cory Doctorow that was named the “word of the year” by both an Australian dictionary and the American Dialect Society for how it summed up widespread frustration with the tech sector, even with modern life. Risher described it as the gravitational pull that makes services worse over time due to profit and investor pressures. By breaking down problems piece by piece, his team has drastically improved the user experience, cutting the driver cancellation rate from a “super irritating” 15% down to below 5%.
From receiving a stark warning from a tech titan to earning a permanent thank-you from another, Risher’s unconventional career has been defined by taking on ambitious challenges. Now, he’s betting that the same customer-first philosophy that turned a small online bookstore into a global empire can drive Lyft’s next chapter of growth.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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House Democrats released a small but notable sample of documents obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. And one line really sticks out.
The line appears to be from a 2014 schedule for the late sex trafficker, dated Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014: “Reminder: Elon Musk to island Dec. 6 (is this still happening?)”
It’s unclear which “island” the line may be referring to, but the obvious suggestion is that it could be a private island in the Caribbean owned by Epstein himself. The island is known as Little Saint James, but most people online just call it Epstein Island.
The press release from Democrats even refers to it as “evidence of a pending trip by Elon Musk to Epstein’s island.”
Excerpt from a schedule for Jeffrey Epstein released by House Democrats asking if Elon Musk was still visiting the “island.” Screenshot: Oversight Dems
The fact that this line appeared in a schedule for 2014 seems notable. Musk has repeatedly denied being involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. But internet commenters have frequently raised questions about a Vanity Fair Oscars party on March 2, 2014, where Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Musk were photographed together.
Back in 2020, Musk addressed the frequent questions about his photo with Maxwell in a tweet, writing, “Don’t know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”
Maxwell was interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice in August and told Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and now a top official at the DOJ, that she first met Musk at a birthday party for Sergey Brin in 2010 or 2011.
“I met him in—I don’t remember the year, but it’s going to be in 2010, ’11, something like that, I think, if my memory serves,” Maxwell said. “And I was at an event for Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. And Sergey had arranged for—it was for his birthday.”
Maxwell said that Epstein was not present for the birthday party, but the New York Times reported in August that Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse included photos of the late sex offender “alongside” famous people like Pope John Paul II, Mick Jagger, Elon Musk, and Fidel Castro.
Representatives for Musk didn’t respond to an email on Friday, but he’s previously said he had nothing to do with Epstein. However, the billionaire Tesla CEO hasn’t been shy about accusing others of being affiliated with the late pedophile.
Musk accused President Donald Trump of being “in the Epstein files” in early June, not long after the two men had a very public falling out. Musk later deleted the tweet, and the two men were photographed sitting together at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk last weekend.
Shortly before the 2024 presidential election, Musk also complained to Tucker Carlson that the Epstein client list hadn’t been released. “You know, I think part of why Kamala’s getting so much support,” Musk said, “if Trump wins, that Epstein client list is going to become public.”
Musk suggested that Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, were on “the list.” Hoffman reportedly visited Epstein’s island in 2014, according to a 2023 article from the Wall Street Journal.
Musk isn’t the only name mentioned in the six pages released by House Democrats on Friday. Bill Gates is also on Epstein’s schedule for Dec. 5, 2014, in New York. It’s listed as a “TBD TENTATIVE Breakfast Party” with Bill Gates.
Excerpt from a 2014 schedule for Jeffrey Epstein that mentions Bill Gates. Screenshot: Oversight Dems
Gates met with Epstein several times, and the Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Epstein had blackmailed the Microsoft co-founder over an alleged affair with a Russian bridge player in 2017. Epstein reportedly wanted Gates to donate to a charitable foundation he was trying to set up with JPMorgan Chase, according to the Journal.
The newly released files also include an email sent to Epstein with his schedule on Nov. 27, 2017, that lists a lunch with Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel in New York.
Excerpt from a document released by House Democrats showing Peter Thiel on a schedule to meet with Jeffrey Epstein. Screenshot: Oversight Dems
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019, and his death was declared a suicide. But many people don’t think that’s how he died, and roughly 70% of Americans think the federal government is hiding something about Epstein.
Julie K. Brown, the journalist who’s arguably most responsible for bringing Epstein’s crimes to broader public attention in the late 2010s, tweeted “Have these been redacted by @GOPOversight @OverSightDems or by the Estate?”
We don’t have an answer to that question yet, but the press release from House Democrats notes, “Extensive redactions have been made to protect victims as Committee investigators continue to analyze the new documents.”
Democrats clearly aren’t going to stop asking about Epstein, who was friends with President Trump for about 15 years before they had a falling out.
“It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” Dem Oversight spokesperson Sara Guerrero said in a statement posted online.
“Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims. Oversight Democrats will not stop until we identify everyone complicit in Epstein’s heinous crimes. It’s past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now.”
The Gates Foundation is pledging to infuse more than $900 million into the global fight against diseases like HIV and malaria. The donation comes as the U.S. has cut more than $10 billion in foreign and humanitarian aid. Elaine Quijano reports on efforts to fill the void.
Oracle founder and potential TikTok overlord Larry Ellison’s current net worth is estimated at $393 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world in 2025, only behind Elon Musk. His fortune has grown rapidly due to massive gains in Oracle’s stock, driven by the AI boom, and a significant stake in Tesla.
Ellison pledged to donate 95% of his wealth as part of the Giving Pledge in 2010. Since then, he’s distanced himself from traditional nonprofits and says he’s opting to give away wealth on his own terms. He founded the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), a for-profit philanthropic organization at The University of Oxford.
But Ellison’s EIT has recently been destabilized by leadership changes, according to a report in The New York Times. In 2024, he hired scientist John Bell to head the research. But in August, Ellison announced he had hired former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to “collaborate” with Bell. Just two weeks later, Bell announced his departure from the “very challenging project.”
The Times reports there are tensions over “how best to commercialize Mr. Ellison’s scientific research, along with persistent questions about how much the institute could trust Mr. Ellison to deliver on his financial commitments.”
Here’s what we know—and don’t—about Ellison’s plans to give away his fortune eventually.
Net worth (2025)
Estimated at $393 billion as of September 2025.
Most of his wealth derives from his 41% share in Oracle and a significant stake in Tesla.
Philanthropy and plans for giving
His main philanthropic focus is through the Ellison Institute of Technology, which aims to address global issues such as healthcare, food insecurity, climate change, and AI advancements, with a major new campus opening in Oxford worth approximately $1.3 billion.
In the past, Ellison has donated hundreds of millions to establish research and treatment centers, including a $200 million contribution to the University of Southern California for a cancer research center and approximately $1 billion in total to the Ellison Medical Foundation (now closed), primarily for medical research.
Amounts already given and future commitment
Direct charitable disbursements are less than those of some peers, but commitments to the Giving Pledge and the Ellison Institute total in the billions.
Key known contributions:
$200 million to USC for cancer research.
Over $1 billion to aging and disease prevention through the Ellison Medical Foundation, before winding it down.
$1.3 billion toward the Oxford Ellison Institute campus, set to open by 2027.
He continues to indicate nearly all his fortune will eventually be directed toward philanthropic causes—done on his own terms and timeline.
Ellison’s net worth has reached record highs in 2025, and though he has pledged to give away almost all of it, his giving is uniquely structured—focusing on large self-driven projects such as the Ellison Institute, rather than broad public charity.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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Bill Gates says recent breakthroughs could save millions—but only if governments maintain support. Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images
Funding for global health is shrinking rapidly amid steep foreign aid cuts by the Trump administration. At the same time, however, scientific breakthroughs are making today’s health innovations more promising than ever. These two realities amount to “the paradox of this moment,” Bill Gates wrote in an op-ed for Time Magazine published yesterday (Sep. 18).
At such a critical juncture, the Microsoft co-founder is doubling down on global health through the Gates Foundation—while urging governments not to abandon their commitments. “The choices they make now—whether to go forward with proposed steep cuts to health aid, or to give the world’s children the chance they deserve to live a healthy life—will determine what kind of future we leave the next generation,” wrote Gates.
Gates has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s pullback from global health programs, including cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and HIV relief initiative PEPFAR. Earlier this year, he denounced the role of Elon Musk, then head of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), for contributing to “the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”
The retreat comes at a time of unprecedented progress. In 2000, more than 10 million children died before the age of five, Gates noted in the op-ed. That number has since fallen by half, and the philanthropist believes it could be halved again within two decades—if funding is sustained or increased.
The Gates Foundation is committing heavily to that future. In May, Gates announced the foundation, with an endowment of $77 billion, will wind down by 2045 after distributing $200 billion in grants. Much of that money will target preventable maternal and child deaths, as well as diseases like polio, malaria and guinea worm. Since its launch in 2000, the foundation has already given away more than $100 billion, much of it to health initiatives.
But philanthropy alone can’t replace government support. “The fact remains: we won’t get there without rich countries giving a small fraction of their budgets,” said Gates.
He has spent much of this year lobbying lawmakers and the Trump administration to protect aid programs. In recent testimony to Congress, he warned that a sharp reduction in U.S. funding could cause the deaths of an additional eight million children by 2040. He has also personally met with Trump, urging him to scale back the severity of cuts. “If you make a very modest cut, we’ll make sure that the money is well spent and there’s no additional deaths,” Gates told TIME in an interview, which was also published yesterday. “But if you have the kind of cuts that are, in fact, the reality today… there will be millions of additional deaths.”
The urgency will soon be tested. In November, the Global Fund, a financing partnership founded in 2002 to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, will hold its next replenishment conference. The U.S. has contributed $27.6 billion to the fund to date, making it its largest donor. Gates said his foundation will announce its own contribution next week.
The upcoming conference will show “just how high of a priority this is for countries,” Gates wrote. “I’ll be interested to see what governments bring to the table.”
In the era of vibe coding, when even professionals are pawning off their programming work on AI tools, Microsoft is throwing it all the way back to the language that launched a billion devices. On Wednesday, the company announced that it would make the source code for Microsoft BASIC for the 6502 Version 1.1 publicly available and open-source. The code is now uploaded to GitHub under an MIT license (with a cheeky commit time stamp of “48 years ago”).
Microsoft called the code—written by the company’s founder, Bill Gates, and its second-ever employee, Ric Weiland—”one of the most historically significant pieces of software from the early personal computer era.” It’s pretty simple, clocking in at just 6,955 lines of assembly language, but that simplicity was key to its becoming so foundational to just about everything.
The MOS 6502 processor, which ran the code, was inexpensive and accessible compared to contemporary alternatives, and variations of the chip would eventually find their way into the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Commodore computers. In fact, the story goes that Microsoft licensed its 6502 BASIC to Commodore for a flat fee of $25,000, which turned out to be a great deal for Commodore, which shipped millions of computers running the code.
Per Microsoft, the company’s first product was a BASIC interpreter for the Intel 8080, which was written by Gates and co-founder Paul Allen. The version the company dropped on GitHub is actually an updated version of BASIC, which contains bug fixes implemented by Gates and Commodore engineer John Feagans. While it’s called 1.1 on GitHub, Microsoft said it initially shipped as BASIC V2.
It’s kind of a big deal for Microsoft to finally open-source the entirety of the code, which was previously only available in bits and pieces. Without Microsoft’s official blessing to make this code public, it was possible that the original documentation, as well as the legal permission needed to use the code, would have been lost to history. Now it’s possible for the code to be preserved, played with, and better understood.
As Ars Technica points out, the assembly code can’t be run on modern devices directly, but is still functional in emulators and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations that allow researchers and programmers to explore old code and mine it for everything from just understanding how it works to understanding how programmers of the past approached efficient design practices.
BASIC 5502 joins GW-BASIC, MS-DOS, and the Altair BASIC on the list of code that Microsoft has open-sourced in recent years.
Warren Buffett pictured at Dairy Queen, one of his favorite restaurants, in September 2010. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Warren Buffett turns 95 years old today (Aug. 30). The billionaire investor’s diet, however, has never quite grown up. His devotion for Coca-Cola is well known, as is his fondness for ice cream, candy and hamburgers. Buffett has never tried to hide it. “I found everything I like to eat by the time I was six,” he told CNBC in a 2023 interview. “I mean, why should I fool around with all these other foods?”
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman has built one of the world’s largest fortunes. But when it comes to food, he keeps it simple. While other billionaires might celebrate a milestone birthday with a lavish meal, Buffett is more likely to be found at McDonald’s or a local Omaha steakhouse.
Here’s a look at some of the Oracle of Omaha’s favorite orders:
Gorat’s Steak House
Gorat’s is known as Warren Buffett’s favorite steakhouse. Photo by Mark Miller/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Buffett is such a loyal customer of Gorat’s Steak House in Omaha, Neb. that the restaurant has become a tourist attraction. Each May, during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, Buffett fans flood Gorat’s, generating as much as one to two months of sales in just a few days.
The menu ranges from $12 onion rings to a $99 lobster dinner. But most visitors stick to Buffett’s go-to: a rare T-bone steak with a double side of hash browns, a cherry Coke and, occasionally, a root beer float.
Smith & Wollensky
Smith & Wollensky hosted Buffet’s annual “Power Lunch” between 2000 and 2022. AFP via Getty Images
Steak, hash browns and a cherry Coke is also Buffett’s standard order at Smith & Wollenksy, the New York steakhouse that hosted his annual “Power Lunch” auctions between 2000 and 2022. Proceeds benefited the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit. While winners paid just over $25,000 in the early years, bids regularly topped $1 million after 2008. The final lunch set a record at $19 million.
Some of those meals fell on Buffett’s birthday. In 2018, the restaurant marked his 88th with a Coca-Cola-themed cake. A year earlier, Smith & Wollensky had baked a dessert decorated with some of his favorite treats.
Piccolo Pete’s
Not every charity lunch took place at Smith & Wollensky. When guests wanted a quieter setting, Buffett often chose Omaha’s Piccolo Pete’s, an Italian steakhouse that closed in 2016. His go-to meals there were veal with lemon, chicken parmesan or, of course, steak.
It was at Piccolo Pete’s where hedge fund manager Ted Weschler dined with Buffett in 2010 and 2011 after bidding $5.2 million across two auctions. The lunches ultimately led to Weschler joining Berkshire Hathaway as an investment manager.
McDonald’s
Most mornings, Buffett swings by a McDonald’s drive-through on his way to work. His order rotates among three choices: two sausage patties for $2.61; a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit for $2.95; or a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit for $3.17. (Prices were as of 2017.)
In the 2017 documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, he revealed that his wife, Astrid Menks, places exact change in his car cup holder for whichever option he chooses. Buffett said he splurges based on the stock market’s mood: “When I’m not feeling quite so prosperous,” he explained, he opts for the cheapest $2.61 meal.
Dairy Queen
Warren Buffett (L) and Bill Gates (R) flip over their Dairy Queen Blizzard treats at the opening of a new branch in Beijing, China on Sept. 30, 2010. AFP via Getty Images
Buffett also has a special connection to Dairy Queen. Berkshire Hathaway acquired the chain in 1998 for $585 million, and Buffett has been a loyal customer ever since. He often visits Omaha locations with his great-grandchildren and typically orders vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate syrup and malted milk powder.
His loyalty has even led to unusual moments. In 2014, he tried to order Dairy Queen ice cream at The Four Seasons before settling for chocolate chip cookies.
This isn’t the first time Bill Gates has poured money into Alzheimer’s research. Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images
More than 7 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease—a figure expected to rise as life expectancies increase. To help accelerate progress, Bill Gates and a coalition of partners are backing a new A.I. competition designed to spur breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and related dementia research.
Unveiled today (Aug. 19) by the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative), the competition will award a $1 million prize to a team that successfully utilizes agentic A.I. to develop innovative solutions. The resulting tools will be made publicly available through the AD Data Initiative’s online research environment.
“The Alzheimer’s Insights A.I. Prize is our call to the global innovation system to act with urgency,” said Niranjan Bose, interim executive director of the AD Data Initiative, in a statement. “A.I. has the potential to revolutionize the pace and scale of dementia research—providing an opportunity we cannot afford to miss out on, especially with so many lives at risk,” added Bose, who also serves as managing director for health and life sciences at Gates Ventures, the family office funding the competition.
For Gates, the mission is deeply personal. He helped launch the AD Data Initiative in 2020, just months after his father died at age 94 from the disease. “We are closer than ever before to a world where no one has to watch someone they love suffer from this awful disease,” said Gates in a Father’s Day post this year, calling for faster progress in Alzheimer’s research.
How can A.I. help?
Alzheimer’s is a particularly complex disease, with multiple potential causes and a web of biological pathways that have long stymied researchers. Agentic A.I. is well-suited to tackling these challenges because it can autonomously analyze large amounts of data and catch insights that human researchers might miss, according to the AD Data Initiative.
Beyond data analysis, A.I. could also transform the very nature of Alzheimer’s research. “A.I. is opening the door for a shift from reactive to predictive research—identifying novel biomarkers of early disease patterns, optimizing clinical trial designs, and revealing unexpected opportunities for drug creation and repurposing,” said Gregory Moore, senior advisor at both Gates Ventures and the AD Data Initiative, in a statement.
Over the years, Gates has poured billions into public health initiatives via his charitable foundation. But his Alzheimer’s work has largely come from his personal fortune, which currently stands at around $118.3 billion. His donations include a $50 million gift to support novel treatments, another $50 million toward clinical trials and early detection and $30 million to create an initiative focused on improving diagnostics.
Now, with the new competition, Gates is widening the call for innovation. Applications open today for A.I. and machine learning engineers, computational biomedicine experts, tech companies, clinical specialists and Alzheimer’s researchers. Semi-finalists will be announced in December, with finalists competing next March at the Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease Conference in Copenhagen.
The Microsoft co-founder has long been one of the world’s wealthiest people. Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via Getty Imag
Bernie Sanders, the famously anti-billionaire senator of Vermont, and Bill Gates, the world’s seventh wealthiest person with an estimated net worth of $138.5 billion, make an unlikely pairing—especially when it comes to debating income inequality. Despite their differences, the duo sat down together to discuss wealth and taxation for the latest episode of Gates’ new Netflix series What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates.
“Several of my friends raised an eyebrow when I told them I was going to meet with him,” said Gates in a blog post on Wednesday (Sept. 18) discussing his meeting with Sanders and the show, which aired the same day. “After all, Sen. Sanders is the first U.S. Senator in history to go on record saying that billionaires shouldn’t exist,” he added.
Sanders maintained this stance during their discussion, calling the existence of ultra-wealthy individuals “unacceptable” and “obscene.” Gates, meanwhile, suggested that billionaires should voluntarily donate their wealth but disagreed on outlawing them altogether. “But again, I’m biased,” conceded the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder. Gates, who has given away some $77.6 billion via the Gates Foundation, has long been a champion for billionaire philanthropy and in 2010 helped create the Giving Pledge, a campaign that urges the ultra-wealthy to donate the majority of their wealth.
How much should the ultra-rich be taxed?
Despite their different stances on banning billionaires, both Gates and Sanders are advocates for higher taxes on the rich. “I’m amazed that the rich aren’t taxed substantially more than they are,” said Gates during the episode. “If you raise taxes a fair bit, there should be enough to somewhat raise the social safety net, which is not as well-funded as I would make it,” he added. The centibillionaire said his ideal tax system would leave the wealthy with a third of their current fortunes, which would give Gates around $46 billion given his current fortune. Sanders, meanwhile, said he “would go a lot further.”
Gates’ comments echo statements he made earlier this month in an interview with The Independent, where he voiced his desire for more progressive tax policies. “If I designed the tax system, I would be tens of billions of dollars poorer than I am,” he told the outlet.
In a 2019 blog post, Gates suggested increasing taxes on large investments by the wealthy and urged the U.S. government to raise the capital gains tax to equal taxes on labor. While those relying on salary and hourly work are taxed at a maximum of 37 percent, “the wealthiest generally only get a tiny percentage of their income from a salary; most of it comes from profits on investments, such as stock or real estate, taxed at 20 percent if they’re held for more than a year,” he said.
During his discussion with Gates, Sanders pointed to a similar idea proposed by Warren Buffett in 2011 when he criticized the fact that he was taxed less than his employees. “That is not what the American people want to see,” said the senator.
Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase (JPM)’s Jamie Dimon—estimated to be worth $2.3 billion—said that higher taxes on the rich would help the nation bring its debt down while increasing economic spending and growth. “You would maybe just raise taxes a bit, like the Warren Buffett-type of rule,” Dimon told PBS, referring to a tax rule borne out of Buffett’s comments that dictates no households earning more than $1 million annually should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families.
The Microsoft founder is ramping up his investments in nuclear power. Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images
Despite the decades-long efforts of scientists around the world, the commercialization of nuclear fusion technology has not yet been achieved on Earth. However, Bill Gates, who has invested significantly in both nuclear fission and fusion startups, is betting on cutting-edge tech to provide a promising path toward green energy. “I’m a big believer that nuclear energy can help us solve the climate problem,” the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder told The Verge in a wide-ranging interview published today (Sept. 5).
Gates has long been outspoken about his adventurous approach to climate technology. Such sentiments have become more pertinent in recent years as concerns about Big Tech’s energy use proliferate. The energy consumption of data centers that power A.I. computing, for example, is expected to potentially double to take up 9 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.
According to Gates, A.I. data centers will actually generate a less than 10 percent increase in energy use. Even so, Big Tech is exploring clean energy sources and will pioneer fission and fusion power “to help bootstrap that green energy generation,” he said. Microsoft, for example, last year signed a power purchase agreement with Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion company backed by Sam Altman, to buy electricity from the startup in 2028.
Lauded for its potential to provide mass amounts of affordable and clean energy, nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun and stars. It occurs when two light atoms combine to form a heavier one while releasing energy, a reaction that must take place in extremely high temperatures of around 10 million degrees Celsius, according to the International Atomic Energy.
Although the process has yet to be commercially harnessed, nuclear fusion technology has received an outburst of financial support in recent years. Of $7.1 billion in total funding since 1992, the sector received $900 million last year, according to a recent report from the Fusion Industry Association, which noted that 89 percent of private fusion companies believe the technology will be operational by the end of the 2030s.
The report identified 45 companies worldwide working to commercialize nuclear fusion. Of those startups, five are backed by Gates via Breakthrough Energy Ventures, his climate-focused investment fund. The billionaire has invested in the likes of Zap Energy, which is hoping to build a fusion power plant in the next few years, and Type One Energy, which uses magnets to help fuse atoms. Both Gates and Amazon (AMZN)’s Jeff Bezos have supported Commonwealth Fusion Systems, another startup aiming to make the commercialization of fusion power a possibility in the near future.
Despite skepticism over whether nuclear fusion—which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide—will actually come to fruition in the next few years or decades, Gates said he remains optimistic. “Although their timeframes are further out, I think the role of fusion over time will be very, very critical,” he told The Verge.
The billionaire has also invested in modern forms of nuclear fission energy, which produces energy when atoms are split apart. Gates is attempting to develop a cheaper form of fission via $1 billion worth of investments into TerraPower, a startup that recently broke ground on a nuclear power plant site in Kemmerer, Wyo. and aims to develop more affordable and safer forms of fission by using water to cool reactors instead of sodium. “People are appropriately skeptical because it’s never been done,” Gates told The Verge. “But they’ll get to see as we build that plant, and if so, it can make a contribution.”
Gates isn’t alone in his embrace of all things nuclear. Bezos, too, has become a prominent investor in fusion technology, having invested in Canadian startup General Fusion’s dreams of developing a pilot plant. OpenAI’s Altman has poured capital and time into the field as well, backing and chairing both Helion Energy and the nuclear energy startup Oklo.
Most investors have probably heard of Bill Gates, best known as a billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT).
After heading up the technology company he founded for more than 25 years, the former CEO stepped down to focus on his charity work. Gates is worth an estimated $132.6 billion (as of this writing), according to Forbes, making him the ninth richest person in the world. However, the fabled billionaire has pledged that “the vast majority of my wealth would go toward helping as many people as possible.”
The vehicle he uses to support that goal is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. “Our mission is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life,” the Gates Foundation website declares. The foundation has made grant payments of $77.6 billion since its inception, “taking on the toughest, most important problems.” As a result, holdings of the Trust tend to vary from quarter to quarter.
While the Trust continues to own stakes in more than two dozen companies, 83% of its portfolio was comprised of just four stocks at the close of the second quarter.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Microsoft: 33%
Of all the holdings in the Gates Trust, Microsoft is by far the largest. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Gates set up the foundation with his own holdings. The Trust owns roughly 35 million shares of Microsoft stock valued at $14.7 billion.
Yet this isn’t the Microsoft of old. The company has expanded beyond its browser and operating system software, with Azure Cloud becoming the fastest-growing cloud infrastructure provider. It’s up 29% year over year in the most recent quarter, outpacing both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alphabet‘s Google Cloud.
However, it was Microsoft’s early move into generative AI that has investors most excited. Management noted that Azure’s cloud growth included “eight points from AI services,” helping illustrate the upside. The company’s AI-powered digital assistant — Copilot — and other AI tools could generate incremental revenue of $143 billion by 2027, according to analysts at Evercore ISI.
The Trust also benefits from Microsoft’s quarterly dividend, which the company has paid out consistently since 2004 and increased every year since 2011. The current yield of 0.7% might seem inconsequential, but that’s a function of the impressive stock price gains of more than 200% over the past five years. Furthermore, with a payout ratio of less than 25%, there are likely many more dividend increases on the horizon.
2. Berkshire Hathaway: 21%
Fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B), has similar plans to donate the bulk of his wealth to charity. He joined Gates in the “Giving Pledge” in 2006 and has since donated roughly $43 billion to the Trust, including a bequest of $4 billion in June. As a result, the Gates Foundation currently holds nearly 25 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares worth $11 billion.
Given Berkshire’s portfolio of profitable businesses and successful stock holdings, it isn’t surprising that the Trust continues to keep so much of the stock on hand. The portfolio provides built-in diversification and is expected to rake in billions in dividend income over the coming year. Furthermore, Berkshire just pared down its stock holdings and boosted its cash pile to a record high. It’s now holding roughly $277 billion in cash.
Given the company’s history of success and massive cash pile, it isn’t surprising that it’s still one of the Trust’s largest holdings.
3. Waste Management: 16%
Gates has a soft spot for boring companies with strong recurring revenue, which is the very definition of Waste Management(NYSE: WM). If you have any doubt, consider this: The Gates Trust has a stake of more than 35 million shares of Waste Management stock worth $7.3 billion.
Beyond just trash collection, Waste Management owns a number of reclamation stations that recover glass, paper, metal, and plastics and redirect them for recycling. The company also operates a number of landfills where it collects landfill gases to generate electricity and power vehicles.
In the second quarter, revenue grew 5.5% year over year, while its adjusted operating EBITDA increased 10%.
Let’s not forget the dividend. Waste Management has increased its payout for 15 consecutive years, with a current yield of 1.43%. And with a payout ratio of 46%, there’s plenty more where that came from.
4. Canadian National Railway: 13%
Another area where Gates and Buffett share common ground is enduring faith in railroads. Buffett was clear when he bought out Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2009, saying that railroads transported goods “in a very cost-effective way… they do it in an extraordinarily environmentally friendly way… [releasing] far fewer pollutants into the atmosphere.” Gates clearly shares this mindset, as the Trust holds nearly 55 million shares of Canadian National Railway(NYSE: CNI) worth $6.2 billion.
What sets Canadian National apart is that it’s the only transcontinental railroad in North America, connecting the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast, and the Gulf of Mexico. Regarding Buffett’s point, railroads reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. This is primarily because they’re four times more efficient than long-haul trucks, making railroads a more cost-effective option. Add to that their high barriers to entry and significant economic moat, and it’s easy to understand the appeal.
Canadian National has a solid track record of dividend payments, with consecutive increases every year since it was initiated in 1996, and a current yield of 2.1%. The current payout ratio of 38% suggests there’s plenty of opportunity for future increases.
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Even the most prominent business figures have felt imposter syndrome.
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates sat down with Jay Shetty on the “On Purpose” podcast this week to talk about her career and personal life, namely moments where she’s had to find grace and embrace a sense of imperfections while on her journey.
French Gates recalled her time running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and admitted that she “felt like an imposter for the first 10 years” and never felt qualified to “speak credibly” about the foundation’s work because she wasn’t professionally trained in global health policy or medicine.
However, one specific incident brought her to an epiphany that changed the way she approached her work and her role.
“Someone actually inside the Foundation who was working for me at the time came to me and wanted me to speak out on something and I said ‘No, no, I don’t feel like I know enough,’” French Gates explained. “And this woman said to me ‘Are you kidding? Just look at all the traveling you have done … all the knowledge you’ve amassed?’”
She said that the employee gave her a multitude of examples of how she was qualified — from the different communities she’s visited to the doctors and scientists she’s worked with, all the while amassing years of direct experience in the field.
“I could speak on behalf of so many of these women that I’d met and who’d invited me into their homes or shown me the tough circumstances of their lives,” French Gates explained. “If they’ve spoken to me, I need to speak their truths into the world … I do know enough. I’ll never know everything, no one will ever know everything on the history of the Earth, but I know enough to know what I know deeply at a core level and to speak those truths.”
French Gates formally resigned as Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in May, noting that under the terms of her departure, she would still have an additional $12.5 billion to spend on philanthropic work moving forward.
“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” she wrote in a statement on X at the time. “The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy.”
Days later, she announced that she would be donating $1 billion over the next two years to organizations advocating for women.
Melinda French Gates’ net worth as of Thursday afternoon was an estimated $13.4 billion.
