(Bloomberg) — Steve Ballmer surpassed Bill Gates on Monday to become the world’s sixth-richest person, the first time the former Microsoft Corp. CEO has been richer than the company’s co-founder.
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The move comes as Microsoft shares hit a new record high, bringing their total gain this year to 21%. The company, through its partnership with OpenAI, has been a major beneficiary of the rise in artificial intelligence that has propelled the U.S. stock market higher.
More than 90% of Ballmer’s $157.2 billion fortune is in Microsoft stock, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates, meanwhile, has diversified his $156.7 billion fortune: About half of it is held in Cascade Investment, which was created with profits from Microsoft stock sales and dividends. He also owns a $21 billion stake in waste management company Republic Services Inc. through Cascade.
Gates, 68, has steadily whittled down his fortune through philanthropy. Along with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates and his friend Warren Buffett, Gates has invested billions of dollars of his own money to create the $75 billion Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest charities.
Since the foundation was founded more than two decades ago, Gates and his ex-wife have donated nearly $60 billion of their personal fortunes. Gates recently stepped down as co-chair of the foundation and was given $12.5 billion to use for her own charitable causes.
In 2010, Gates, French Gates and Buffett also founded the Giving Pledge, an organization that encourages the world’s wealthiest people to give away most of their wealth during their lifetime or in their wills. Ballmer, 68, who has not signed the Giving Pledge, has his own philanthropic work, but not on the scale of Gates’.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen in 1975 and ran it until 2000, when Ballmer, one of the company’s first employees, replaced him as CEO. Ballmer retired in 2014 and became Microsoft’s largest shareholder that same year. He purchased the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion in 2014, an investment that is worth an estimated $4.6 billion today.
–With assistance from Sophie Alexander and Jack Witzig.
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