Bill Gates dropped out of the top 10 richest people in the world for the first time in years in Bloomberg's recently released billionaires ranking. His net worth fell 30%, or $52 billion, after Bloomberg adjusted its calculations to more accurately reflect the Microsoft co-founder's massive charitable donations.
This telling figure is an opportunity to look back at the portrait of one of the most influential figures in the world over the past three decades: from a technology genius, a software king, to a man who spent the rest of his life... giving.
“Lost” 52 billion USD just because of... charity
Bill Gates's sudden drop in ranking came not from the stock market or economic fluctuations, but from a rare act of transparency in giving.
On July 4, Bloomberg announced that it had updated its algorithm for calculating Gates’s wealth. The organization adjusted downward the expected growth rates of Gates’s fortune to more accurately reflect the impact of his announced charitable donations as well as the estimate of his personal wealth shared in a May blog post.
In the post, the tech mogul said his actual net worth was $108 billion — significantly less than the $175 billion Bloomberg previously reported. Gates also said he would “give away nearly all of his wealth” through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next 20 years. By the end of 2045, the foundation is expected to have spent more than $200 billion before it closes.
This adjustment has caused Bill Gates to drop 7 places on the ranking, from 5th to 12th. Meanwhile, the person who replaced him in 5th place is Steve Ballmer, former assistant and successor to Microsoft CEO, with assets of up to 172 billion USD, increased sharply thanks to Microsoft's stock price continuously breaking new records.
Steve Ballmer – who was Bill Gates' assistant and then succeeded him as CEO of Microsoft – rose to 5th place with a fortune of 172 billion USD thanks to his "loyalty" to Microsoft stocks (Photo: Getty).
The founder steps back, the successor steps forward
It may come as a surprise to many that Steve Ballmer is now richer than Bill Gates. Typically, employees, even successor CEOs, rarely accumulate a larger fortune than their founders.
Ballmer was an exception. He joined Microsoft in 1980 as an assistant to the president, earning a modest $50,000 salary and 10% of any growth in profits he helped the company generate. Later, because the bonus was so large, Microsoft decided to replace it with equity in the company - a historic decision.
Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 and stepped down in 2014 with a 4% stake in Microsoft. He now owns the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team and has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Microsoft's more than 10-fold stock gain over the past decade.
Ballmer was also questioned by Charlie Munger, legendary investment advisor and longtime associate of Warren Buffett, about why he held Microsoft shares for so long while Gates and Paul Allen diversified their portfolios very early.
Ballmer simply replied: “I'm not as smart as them. But I'm loyal.”
The dramatic turn of a billionaire
The transformation from tech mogul to global philanthropist didn't happen overnight.
Gates was criticized for Microsoft's aggressive business strategies in the 1990s. But since the early 2000s, he has gradually withdrawn from the business world, redefining his personal image and aiming to support health care,education , and combat climate change on a global scale.
In 2010, Gates and Buffett even initiated The Giving Pledge - a commitment that hundreds of billionaires around the world have signed, agreeing to give away at least half of their assets to charity.
When Gates was no longer the world's richest man, many people were sad. But it also highlighted a rare example: a man willing to fall in rank but rise in human influence.
Billionaire Bill Gates once announced that he would double his charitable giving to $200 billion over the next 20 years (Photo: Getty).
In an era when billionaire rankings have become a source of curiosity, even envy, Bill Gates' story is a "wake-up call" to traditional measures of success.
A man’s fortune “dropped” by $52 billion simply because he was honest about his giving. A billionaire was pushed out of the top 10 for deciding not to maximize personal profit, but to maximize community benefits.
Since stepping down as CEO of Microsoft, Gates has devoted almost all of his time, energy, and prestige to building the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – now one of the world’s largest private charities. As of the end of 2024, Gates and his ex-wife Melinda had donated $60 billion, while his close friend Warren Buffett contributed another $43 billion.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/kinh-doanh/bill-gates-rot-top-10-ty-phu-giau-nhat-hanh-tinh-mat-tien-nhung-duoc-gi-20250709000905223.htm
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