Photos: Inside Bill Gates’s Net Worth. There’s More Than Microsoft.

What’s at stake in divorce? A fortune that includes sprawling farms, Four Seasons hotels and a rare Da Vinci notebook.

By Inti Pacheco, Dave Cole and Theo Francis
Updated Oct. 26, 2021
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Bill Gates became one of the world’s richest men from Microsoft Corp., and while he still is a sizable shareholder, he has diversified his fortune. His recently announced divorce from Melinda Gates will divide up an estate estimated at $130 billion, which goes beyond mansions and jets. The holdings include Four Seasons hotels, garbage hauler Republic Services, vast tracts of U.S. farmland and a rare Leonardo da Vinci notebook.

Mr. Gates is one of the largest owners of U.S. farmland, with an estimated 242,000 acres from Louisiana to Arizona, according to Land Report magazine. In 2017, entities controlled by Mr. Gates paid more than $500 million to purchase the bulk of these properties from a Canadian pension fund.

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Mr. Gates partnered with another of the world’s wealthiest men, Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, in 2007 to buy luxury hotel chain Four Seasons Holdings Inc. for $3.8 billion. The Four Seasons in Madrid is shown.

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Mr. Gates has long traveled on private jets and owned several models, including this Bombardier Global Express shown in 2013. Earlier this year, his company Cascade Investment LLC joined in a $4.7 billion deal that expanded its stake in Signature Aviation PLC, the largest operator of private-jet airports.

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It isn't all luxury hotels and business jets. Cascade owns 3.9% of Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest trash hauler, and a third of Republic Services Inc., the second-largest waste collection company.

Ken Steinhardt/The Orange County Register/Zuma Press

In April 2020, the Gateses bought this oceanfront mansion near San Diego for $43 million, one of several properties they own.

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Their principal residence has been a lakeside estate in Medina, Wash., with seven bedrooms and 18 bathrooms, according to property records. It was appraised at $131 million.

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A newly married Mr. Gates in 1994 bought this scientific notebook by Leonardo da Vinci, known as the Codex Leicester, for $30.8 million, setting a Christie’s record for a manuscript. Da Vinci wrote the document backward, possibly because—like Mr. Gates—he was left-handed.

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Mr. Gates and other business leaders five years ago put $1 billion into creating a venture-capital firm to invest in clean energy, called Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Its investments include startups working on low-carbon cement, vehicle-battery technology and energy storage systems. In January, Breakthrough raised more than $1 billion for its second fund.

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Mr. Gates is a car collector, who fought for years to import a rare Porsche 959 to the U.S. and said last year he bought his first electric car, a Porsche Taycan. Cascade is also a major shareholder in AutoNation, the biggest owner of U.S. car dealerships. When the couple filed for divorce, Cascade transferred shares in AutoNation and other companies to Ms. Gates.

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Mr. Gates’s personal stake in Microsoft, as high as 45% when he took it public in 1986, was down to 1.3% by 2019, according to securities filings, a stake that would currently be worth about $25 billion.

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Mr. Gates focused on his philanthropy after stepping down as CEO in 2000. Before filing for divorce, the couple had donated more than $36 billion to their foundation and vowed to give away most of their wealth.

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Corrections & Amplifications:
The photo of Bill Gates's plane is a Bombardier Global Express pictured in 2013. An earlier version of the caption incorrectly identified the jet as a Gulfstream 650ER.

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