Net Worths Of America’s Top 30 Business Tycoons

2. Bill Gates – $114 billion

William Henry Gates III is an American business tycoon who held the prominent Chairman, CEO, and Chief Software Architect position at Microsoft. As a result, Gates’s net worth is $114 billion as of 2020. Because of his amassed wealth, he and his wife Melinda own the charitable foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable foundation. It works to eliminate polio, improve global health, and save lives. Gates founded Microsoft in April 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen. Originally it was based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and relocated to Washington State in 1979. At that time, Microsoft was a budding multinational technology company specializing in computers and software that became an international giant. Microsoft’s most significant success came in 1980 when IBM made a contract to pay $430,000 to Microsoft.

1994 was a marked year for Gates, who became the richest man in America at 38 with $9.35 billion in combined wealth. In turn, the company entered the commercial consumer market with sales reaching $3.7 billion, and 1995 was a new era of success and wealth for Gates. He prepared the staff for an internet tidal wave that made hopes to place Microsoft at the forefront of the worldwide web industry. In March 2020, he announced to step down from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway. However, his charitable foundation spent up to $100 million on the COVID pandemic.