Everybody knows Bill Gates as the co-founder and longtime CEO of Microsoft. But Gates himself doesn’t consider that to be his most important job.
Gates, along with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, revolutionized the personal computing business in the 1970s and 80s. In the 1990s, Microsoft helped bring the Internet mainstream through its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer web browser.
These innovations brought the company enormous success—and tremendous personal wealth. In 1987, at the age of 31, Gates became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
But just eight years after Microsoft’s March 13, 1986 IPO, Gates’ mind had already turned to philanthropy.
He set out to apply the same data-driven methods fueling Microsoft’s explosive growth to help address global health inequities, founding the William H. Gates Foundation in 1994. In 2000, he joined forces with his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, to establish the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Both organizations were funded in large part by Gates’ Microsoft stock holdings.
In 2010, Gates co-founded The Giving Pledge alongside French Gates and his good friend, Warren Buffett, encouraging the world’s wealthiest individuals to donate at least half of their wealth to philanthropic causes during their lifetimes or upon their deaths.
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates has said. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
So after a few decades of giving away his Microsoft fortune, just how much MSFT stock does Bill Gates own today?
How much of Microsoft does Bill Gates own in 2026?
While the Gates Foundation Trust sold its remaining 7.7 million Microsoft shares during the first quarter of 2026, Gates himself still owns a substantial stake in the company he led for 25 years.
According to Barron’s, as of May 2026, Gates personally held approximately 103 million MSFT shares, valued at around $43 billion at the time.
Since then, Microsoft shares have climbed significantly. Based on MSFT’s October 13 closing price of around $543, Gates’ reported stake would now be worth approximately $55.9 billion, assuming he did not make any changes to his holdings.
Bill Gates announced plans to give away nearly all of his personal wealth and close the Gates Foundation within 20 years. In a blog post on Thursday, he wrote, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.” Gates estimates that the foundation will be able to hand out another $200 million between now and 2045. #TODAYShow
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Is Bill Gates the largest individual shareholder of Microsoft?
Actually, he’s not. That distinction belongs to former CEO Steve Ballmer, who succeeded Gates in 2000 and is estimated by Bloomberg to still own 319 million shares, or approximately 4% of the company.
But since Gates and Ballmer stepped down from the company’s board in 2020 and 2014, respectively, neither appears in Microsoft’s latest Proxy statement.
Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, holds 900,572 shares, according to the Proxy statement, which would be worth $489.4 million as of MSFT’s October 13 close.
That means that even in light of Gates’ reduced ownership levels, he still holds over 100 times more shares than Nadella.
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What was the peak number of MSFT shares that Bill Gates owned?
According to Forbes, if Gates and French Gates had “never discovered philanthropy,” their combined net worths would be $1.5 trillion. Even after the couple’s divorce, the publication continued, Gates himself would still be worth $1.2 trillion.
The reason? Right before Microsoft’s 1986 IPO, Gates owned 11.2 million shares of Microsoft—a 49% stake in the company. Forbes calculated that if Gates had held onto those original shares, accounting for subsequent stock splits, Gates and French Gates would have owned 3.2 billion shares worth $1.4 trillion, with another $100 billion in after-tax dividends.
However, being one of the richest people on the planet was about the last thing Bill Gates wanted to do.
In a May 2025 Gates Notes blog post, Gates announced plans to accelerate his philanthropy, with the Gates Foundation expecting to give away more than $200 billion over the next 20 years before ending its operations on December 31, 2045.
This marked a change to the Foundation’s original plan to sunset operations “several decades” after Gates and French Gates’ deaths.
More on founders’ wealth:
- Steve Jobs’ net worth: How rich Apple’s founder could have been
- Warren Buffett’s net worth: A look at his fortune in retirement
- Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth: How the Facebook founder hit $200 billion
“I now believe we can achieve the foundation’s goals on a shorter timeline, especially if we double down on key investments and provide more certainty to our partners,” Gates wrote.
“My net worth will drop 99% over the next 20 years,” Gates added.
MSFT’s biggest institutional shareholders
But even Microsoft’s legendary founder doesn’t own as many shares as its largest institutional investors.
According to Microsoft’s Proxy statement, The Vanguard Group is Microsoft’s largest institutional shareholder. It holds 664,882,153 shares, or approximately 8.95% of the company, worth approximately $359.8 billion.
BlackRock follows, holding 540,020,228 shares, or 7.30% of Microsoft. Its stake is worth approximately $293.4 billion as of MSFT’s October 13 close.
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