Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist who is the co-founder of Microsoft and longtime acquaintance of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Education
Gates scored 1590 out of 1600 on the (SAT) and enrolled at  in the autumn of 1973. He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met fellow student. Gates left Harvard after less than two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated . Ballmer would later succeed Gates as Microsoft's CEO in 2000.

Career
In 1972, Gates and classmate formed a venture called  to make traffic counters based on the  processor.

Microsoft
Gates left Harvard to co-found Microsoft on April 4, 1975 with to pursue an opportunity to develop a  interpreter for the.

In 1983, Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs invited Gates to preview the pre-release development of the Macintosh. After Jobs was forced out and Microsoft had released Windows 2.0 with a GUI that was similar to the Mac, Apple Computer, under CEO John Sculley, filed a in 1988 against Microsoft.

After Jobs returned to a financially troubled Apple Computer, he negotiated an end to the lawsuits with Microsoft and agreed to cross-license technology between the two companies in exchange for Microsoft's commitment to continue developing software such as Microsoft Office for the Mac and an investment of $150 million in Apple non-voting stock. Apple also agreed to include the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser by default with future Mac OS releases for the next 5 years. Though the joint announcement by Jobs and Gates was met with shock at Macworld Expo Boston in 1997, the investment from Microsoft helped save Apple from bankruptcy.

After Microsoft
In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and donated stock valued at 5 billion to create the charitable. It was identified as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation in 2013, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion at the time. As of November 2019, foundation indirectly owned $1.8 billion worth of Apple stock through its investment in. On May 3, 2021, Gates announced that he and Melinda were divorcing, leaving the future of their foundation in question.

Media portrayal
Gates was portrayed by in the television dramatization Pirates of Silicon Valley.