Microsoft co-founder Bill and Melinda Gates have recently announced that they are going to get a divorce after 27 years of marriage.
This couple has built up a combined $124bn (£89bn) fortune which made them among the five richest couples in the world.
On Monday, they send a joint statement on twitter about their divorce that they have given serious thought before they decided to end things on a good note.
“Last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” they wrote on social media.
“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
Microsoft founder Bill Gates started this world’s most valuable company when he was a teenager, and turned into the world’s richest man and philanthropist. He met Melinda Gates at Microsoft in 1987 and got married in 1994. Very often he used to refer to his wife as his “truly equal partner”.
Their foundation now provided more than $54 billion in grants for almost 20 years. Their controlled areas are health, like malaria and infectious disease control, agricultural research, and basic health care and sanitation over the world, which endowment more than $46 billion.
The couple’s divorce could create new questions about their wealth, most of which has yet to be donated to their foundation, despite co-creating the Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to give the majority of their wealth to charity.
Nowadays Bill Gates has largely distanced himself from Microsoft and the tech industry and preferred to speak about poverty, health initiatives, and the pandemic. In 2020 the foundation distributed $250 million to help fight the pandemic.
The Gates couple’s divorce is the second high-profile divorce after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie got separated after 25 years of marriage back in 2019.
