For the first time since 1991, the Microsoft cofounder isn’t No. 1 or No. 2 on The Forbes 400, which annually ranks the richest people in the U.S. While Gates’s fortune jumped by $23 billion from a year ago—to an estimated $134 billion—it wasn’t enough to catch Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortunes reached new heights thanks to their respective companies’ rising share prices. Gates came in behind those three, landing at the No. 4 spot.
But the stock market isn’t the only reason Gates is down from No. 2 last year. A chunk of Gates’ net worth—at least $5.7 billion worth of shares in publicly traded companies—has gone to ex-wife Melinda French Gates after they announced their divorce in May. If his marriage and fortune had stayed intact, Gates would be richer than Zuckerberg, at No. 3 this year.
Nearly a quarter of Gates’ fortune comes from his estimated 1.3% stake in Microsoft, worth $31 billion as of September 3, the date Forbes took a snapshot of wealth for this year’s Forbes 400 list. The rest of Gates’ fortune comes from his investment firm, Cascade Investment LLC, along with other assets, such as his sprawling $143 million estate in Medina, Washington, dubbed “Xanadu.” Through Cascade, Gates owns a controlling stake in the Four Seasons Hotels, 14% of car dealership AutoNation, shares of waste management firm Republic Services, tractor maker Deere & Co., Canadian National Railway and much more.
The makeup of Gates’ fortune looks a whole lot different from when he first appeared on The Forbes 400 in 1986, the year Microsoft went public. Gates owned 45% of Microsoft’s shares at the time, and he was worth $315 million. The next year, Microsoft’s surging stock price made him the world’s youngest billionaire, worth $1.25 billion at age 31.
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