Original subtitles

That dream of a personal computer really came true.

Was fun to do that, I worked night and day doing it.

I met Melinda, another employee there, and married her.

I now have three wonderful kids.

But also the success of Microsoft,

I owned part of Microsoft, that became very valuable.

I know, huge, huge numbers,

and if I had not given that money to my foundation,

I would today have more money

than anyone else on the planet.

I still have a lot because I haven't put it all

into the foundation, but that is the plan.

Bill Gates, the extraordinarily successful

American business leader and philanthropist.

One of the best known entrepreneurs

who started a business out of a tiny space,

and it grew into one

of the most powerful companies in the world, Microsoft.

One of the wealthiest men on the planet

with an estimated net worth of over $100 billion,

but also one of the greatest minds.

After spending 13 years as the world's richest man,

he now spends his time and energy

on tackling global poverty,

and dedicates his efforts in philanthropic endeavors

such as climate change,

global health and development, and education.

After revolutionizing the tech industry,

Bill Gates has become a tech billionaire legend.

Talented, driven, a bold achiever with a long-term vision,

determined to make a significant positive impact

in the world, by helping the poorest countries.

Bill Gates is an example.

This man cares about those in need

and is fighting for great causes.

Follow the journey of one of the world's greatest leaders,

from his early days as a quiet computer programmer

to the multi-billionaire philanthropist he's become today,

and whose social and political impact on society is deep.

They are masterminds.

Ambitious, competitive and ruthless, not afraid of failure,

dedicated to their mission of bettering the world,

always reaching for excellence,

they lead by example.

Unlike many industries,

the tech billionaires are mostly self-made.

It is through their genius

that they revolutionize the industry

and together they change the world.

Join us in this series, as we take a look

at some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the modern world,

the tech billionaires.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

Together they're worth a collective

of more than $900 billion.

They will be remembered in history

as the most influential people of the 21st century.

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Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates Jr,

on October 28th, 1955, in Seattle, Washington.

He grew up in an upper middle-class

loving and supportive family,

with his older sister Kristianne

and his younger sister Libby.

Their father, William Henry Gates Sr.,

was a Seattle attorney, philanthropist

and co-creator of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

His mother, Mary Gates, was a school teacher

and devoted her time to helping raise the children

and working on civic affairs and with charities.

Gates was a relatively privileged child.

His parents encouraged all three children

to be competitive and strive for excellence.

He excelled in school, showed early signs of competitiveness

and intellectual achievement,

and quickly gained a fascination for computer language.

At 13, he wrote his first software program

while at Lakeside High School, and met Paul Allen,

an encounter that would change his life.

Leaving his family at 17,

he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts

and enrolled at Harvard University in 1973,

originally thinking of a career in law.

But he would change his plans later on.

There he met Steve Ballmer,

who encouraged him to have more social life.

Introvert and often ridiculed as a nerd,

Gates was very much into reading

and declared himself that he was antisocial.

He only dated on rare occasions

and made sure whoever he was dating had scored, like him,

a high SAT grade.

His mother was deeply disappointed,

when two years later he dropped out of Harvard

to pursue his own mission,

and start his own computer software business

with his high school friend Paul Allen,

in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But little did they know

it would end up changing the course of history

and the computer industry.

The now multi-billion-dollar giant tech company

would propel Gates to success,

making him a millionaire by age 26,

the youngest billionaire at 31,

and one of the richest men in the world.

With the ambitious goal of placing together

a computer on every desk and in every home,

together they founded Microsoft.

Well, we're continually trying to make

the computers easier to use.

I mean, the idea is that eventually

everyone will use a computer as a very important tool.

It was interesting for me, you know,

I met a lot of other kids who were good at math.

I hung out and that was fun.

But I was still kind of dreaming

of the idea of a personal computer.

So in 1975, I dropped out of school.

I don't recommend it, but I left Harvard.

I went on leave from Harvard and started Microsoft.

Gates later moved the company

to Bellevue, Washington in 1979, closer to where he grew up.

Although it started on shaky grounds,

by this time it was grossing approximately $2.5 million.

At the age of only 23, Gates placed himself

as head of the company.

He led with a keen business sense and personally reviewed

every line of code the company shipped,

often rewriting code himself when it was necessary.

In November 1980, the world's dominant computer maker, IBM,

was looking for software

that would operate their personal computer,

and approached Microsoft.

Legend has it that at the first meeting with Gates,

someone at IBM mistook him for an office assistant

and asked him to serve coffee.

Gates expertly manipulated the larger company,

so they became permanently dependent on him

for basic software.

Following the development of software for IBM,

between 1979 and 1981, Microsoft's growth exploded.

Staff increased and revenue shot up from $2.5 million

to $16 million.

As the company grew, Gates transitioned

from a manager role to an executive.

In mid '81 he was appointed president

and chairman of the board.

Allen was named executive vice president.

By 1983 Microsoft was going global,

with offices in Great Britain and Japan.

An estimated 30% of the world's computers

ran on its software.

The competition was high,

as the computer industry was growing

with companies like Apple and Intel,

but he saw it as a good thing

and used it as fuel to keep improving.

Well, we've had competitors at every stage of our history.

You know, one of the big things for us

was IBM saying they'd put us out of business with OS/2.

OS/2 isn't as well known today as it was

when that was said.

Ashton-Tate was big in database,

Novell in networking software.

And so when new competitors come along,

it's great for consumers.

He even values competitors like Google.

Great to have Google out there.

It's really pushing us on the internet search.

We enjoy that.

So fear's not the right word,

but the value of competition and the enjoyment

and the visibility that brings, that's great.

Using various business and marketing tactics,

Gates was working hard to make sure

the Microsoft software stayed on top.

The work we're doing is,

it's not like we're doing the same thing all day long.

We go into our offices and think up new programs.

We get together in meetings.

We go out and see end users.

We talk to customers.

There's so much variety,

and there's always new things going on.

And I don't think there'll ever come a time

when that would be boring.

Despite the success of Microsoft,

Gates never felt totally secure.

And he had to demonstrate

a strong dedication to his business.

Always checking on the competition over his shoulder,

he developed a drive and competitive spirit

and a confrontational attitude.

He became a solid business leader.

When we were small,

we couldn't do these advanced research things.

And so we're stronger today than ever,

because we have the research lab in Cambridge.

We've got a research lab now in China, one in India,

and that's where the top problems

in computer science are gonna be solved.

That's why Microsoft got such a great future,

because we're looking into how to do

that speech recognition or visual recognition,

things that people have talked about for a long time,

we're actually doing it.

And that's because we're a company

that takes long-term approach.

We've got these great researchers

and in this next decade, all of those tough problems

will be solved with software.

His intelligence allowed him

to see all sides of the software industry

from product development to corporate strategy.

I enjoy working with the people,

talking about what we're gonna get done,

getting real excited, making sure

that the structure is there,

that the ideas get measured properly

and really leading the company, that's exciting.

Right around the same time as Microsoft,

another company was built, the revolutionary Apple.

Its CEO, Steve Jobs.

It was a natural catalyst for the rivalry,

and it actually spurred their success.

Though their love-hate relationship is legend,

Microsoft and Apple shared many of their early innovations.

And they weren't always enemies.

In 1981 Apple invited Microsoft

to help develop software for Macintosh computers.

Well, we've always had lots of competitors, you know.

There are a lot of great companies in this industry.

It is becoming more software-centered.

That is if you take, why is the Xbox 360 doing so well?

Or why are other people's things doing well?

It's that software capability.

And that's a bet that we made

at the beginning of the company,

that software would be fundamental.

We're the company that does

the most advanced research in software.

So we think that's gonna pay off very well for us,

but we love the competition.

Some areas like the tablet or interactive TV,

we're kind of out on our own.

Other areas like search,

people see that someone else has done a good job,

and we can surprise them by showing

that we can match and go beyond.

It was through this knowledge-sharing

that Microsoft developed a new system.

On November 20th, 1985, Microsoft launched Windows,

which looked visually very similar to the Macintosh system

introduced two years earlier by Apple.

Windows used a mouse to drive a graphic interface,

displaying text and images on the screen.

This differed greatly from the operating system

developed by Microsoft,

where all text formatting showed on the screen as code,

and not what actually would be printed.

In March 1986, Gates took Microsoft public

with an initial offering of $21 per share,

making him an instant millionaire at age 31.

Over time, the company stock increased in value.

Just a year later in '87, Gates became a billionaire,

when the stock hit $90.75 a share.

Since then he's been at the top,

or at least near the top, of Forbes annual list

of the top 400 wealthiest people in America.

By the start of the '90s,

he'd become the PC industries ultimate kingmaker.

In 1999 with stock prices at an all-time high,

Gates wealth briefly top $101 billion.

I feel very proud of the record of our industry

in serving customers.

It's really breathtaking the power that you get

for very little money.

Any industry where somebody can start a company from scratch

and in less than four years

sell that company for $10 billion,

that's an industry of opportunity.

There are more new startups,

more new jobs being created in our industry,

more new competitors to Microsoft

being formed now than ever before.

It should not be surprising

that one of the wealthiest people in the world

has an insanely extravagant high-tech home.

In 1997, Gates and his family

would move into a 66,000 square foot,

$54 million massive mansion

that he spent seven years building

on the shore of Lake Washington.

The property is loaded with high-tech details.

It features screens showing changeable artwork,

has speakers hidden behind wallpaper,

allowing music to follow you from room to room.

It even has a sand beach and a swimming pool

with its own underwater sound system.

The estate he dubbed Xanadu 2.0 is so big and famous,

it has its own Wikipedia page.

But all of this didn't come without ambition,

efforts and perseverance.

Bill Gates always kept a strong will and kept being smart.

Gates also had overcome his fears to launch Microsoft

and make it a success.

He had to overcome challenges

by eventually learning how to delegate.

Before Microsoft became a success,

he struggled with self-confidence

and actually feared that his business would be a bust.

In fact, his first attempt to build his first ever business,

Traf-O-Data at 17 years old with Paul Allen, was a fail,

but it would be the early steps

of what would ultimately become Microsoft.

"Even though Traf-O-Data wasn't a roaring success,

"it was seminal in preparing us

"to make Microsoft's first product a couple of years later",

explained Allen some years later.

His confidence was also broken many times

as he watched companies he idolized fail.

Gates' anxiety has persisted,

but his early days taught him a vital lesson.

Things are risky and you better not miss a turn in the road.

He realized that feeling challenged early in his career

helped him be successful.

Later on, Microsoft had to settle several lawsuits,

after being accused of becoming a monopoly

and using anti-competitive practices.

They had to pay a devastating price.

In 1987, Gates, then 32,

sat next to the young and bright Melinda French

at a business dinner party in New York City.

She was a 23-year-old Microsoft product manager.

The pair was a perfect match.

On January 1st, 1994, Melinda and Gates

were married in Hawaii.

They had three children.

Following the devastating death

of his mother to breast cancer

just a few months after their wedding,

they took some time off in 1995 to travel

and get a new perspective on life and the world.

Following the footsteps of his mother

and with Melinda's influence,

Gates started to gain an interest

in becoming a civic leader and a philanthropist.

In 1994, the couple established

the William Henry Gates Foundation.

In 2000, the couple combined several family foundations

and made a $28 billion contribution

to form the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

based in Seattle.

It is reported to be the largest private foundation

in the world, holding around $50 billion in assets.

It is dedicated to supporting education, world health

and reducing extreme poverty across the globe.

The foundation is controlled by its three trustees

Bill and Melinda and American investor Warren Buffett,

one of the most successful investors in the world today.

I think our view of the foundation really

is we got started in 1993 when we started to see the need,

the need was so great.

And it starts, the foundation starts with the premise

that no life on this planet is more important

in one place than on the other.

And so when you take that basic premise

and you say there's so much going on,

so much need in health today, we had to start now.

Would've been convenient to wait till we were 60

to start to redistribute the wealth,

but disease doesn't wait.

And so we decided that now really

is the time for us to start.

And I think you could also say

that it has a lot of dreams for the foundation.

When we look at health, a dream of an HIV vaccine

is a huge dream for us as a couple,

something we'd like to see,

or microbicide, which is a gel

that a woman might be able to use someday

to prevent HIV/AIDS. I think we have a lot of dreams

in terms of what scientific tools can do for people

in the developing world.

In 2000 Gates stepped down from Microsoft CEO,

turning over the job to his childhood friend, Steve Ballmer.

Though he remained chairman of the board,

he preferred to concentrate on what was for him

the more passionate side of the business.

In 2006 Gates further announced

he was transitioning himself

from full-time work at Microsoft

to devote more quality time and energy to the foundation.

In the meantime, he reached milestones

with the launch of Microsoft Windows Vista in 2007,

whose new software allowed people to interact in new ways.

This is a special occasion.

We've worked hard to build a new software platform,

and we're so excited to see

what people are going to do with it.

In 1983, Microsoft introduced

the very first version of Windows, that was 24 years ago.

And at the time PCs were not very powerful.

There was a lot of question of whether graphics interface

was something that made sense at all.

People were skeptical about whether parameters would learn

to be able to build applications that were very different,

since the user could interact in a variety of new ways.

And it took a long time for that to be well accepted.

That same year Bill and Melinda were ranked

the second most generous philanthropists in America

after Warren Buffett.

They're working hard together

to give their wealth back to society,

planning to eventually donate 95% to charity.

It's my responsibility I feel

to take these resources of society

that I've gotten and give them back

in the most impactful way.

And that's what's led to the creation of the foundation

that my wife and I run.

Kind of amazingly, my friend Warren Buffett

added a substantial part of his resources to that as well.

And so just like at Microsoft,

the foundation has taken on very ambitious goals.

We want a vaccine for tuberculosis and malaria.

We wanna reduce all the childhood deaths

that happen in these poor countries

that really isn't visible to the rich world,

and the rich world hasn't put enough energy into that.

And so it'll take decades to do that.

Very similar to my work with Microsoft,

working with smart people, being optimistic,

giving them lots of resources.

And so I'm thrilled I get that chance.

And that's the responsibility I have

as somebody who's gotten the wealth

that Microsoft generated.

But Gates makes it clear.

Fame is not his goal.

Well, I don't need to be remembered at all.

My wife and I have decided

that our foundation will spend all its money

within 20 years, when neither of us are around.

So we're not trying to create some perpetual thing.

Well, none of the people who are at risk of polio

know anything about me, nor should they.

They are dealing with day-to-day life

and the fact that their child might get crippled.

We just need to get rid of that,

and then we won't have to talk about it.

On June 27th, 2008,

he gave a teary farewell to Microsoft

on his last full day at the company.

"There won't be a day in my life that I'm not thinking

"about Microsoft and the great things that it's doing

"and wanting to help", said Gates.

Wiping away tears, as the employees rose

to give him a standing ovation.

Leaving behind a life's work developing software

to devote his energy to fight poverty in the world,

Gates went on to create greater things.

He still works on special technology projects at Microsoft.

In February 2014, Gates stepped down

as chairman of Microsoft

in order to move into a new position as technology advisor.

Longtime CEO Steve Ballmer

was replaced by Satya Nadella.

Over the next few years,

Gates' involvement with the foundation

occupied much more of his time interest.

When we were engaged, Bill and I talked about the fact

that this wealth would go back to society.

And again, because we both came from families

who were deeply involved in volunteerism and giving back,

it was just a natural.

So I would say the converse has been true for us.

One of the most fun things has been

Bill now getting to spend full time on the foundation.

We were already, obviously the last 10 years,

working collaboratively on the foundation,

but now that we can do it full time,

we're all the more excited and passionate

about working together.

With his foundation,

Gates is committed to saving lives,

reducing sickness, to lifting society up

and making it self-sufficient and stable.

In low-income countries like Sub-Saharan Africa

and Southeast Asian countries,

Gates knew that people were still dying at an alarming rate,

mostly from illnesses that could easily be treated

with basic medicine.

It was common sense for him that basic needs

in poorest nations like Ethiopia and Rwanda

have to be taken care of first

for them to reach a stable state.

It all started in 2000, when among others,

the foundation decided to build institutions

that would support a wide range of public health projects

by leading campaigns and granting aid

to fight transmittable and deadly diseases

such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria

known as the three biggest killers in poor countries.

Vaccines, the miracle technology.

The one project that makes them the most proud

has been creating widespread immunization programs.

In his fight against disease,

he states that big breakthroughs have been made,

and they've shown that hundreds of millions

of children's lives can be saved

by innovations like new vaccines.

It saves children's lives.

When you say there are eight million children

who die every single year,

many from vaccine preventable diseases,

and we know we can tackle those diseases,

it makes me excited about getting those tools out to mothers

so that they know they can raise healthy children.

The need to get them out

into the developing world is greater, more than ever before,

but it is not an easy journey,

and the results don't come automatically.

It seems that it isn't enough

just to develop powerful medicines.

They have to reach the people who need them.

And it often means getting medicine

to remote villages in war zones.

Over the past decades, Gates and his wife Melinda

have invested $10 billion into organizations

that do this challenging work,

including three big ones, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance,

The Global Fund and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

He claimed that it was the best investments

they had ever made.

In 2016 Gates and former UK Chancellor George Osborne

pledged three billion pounds to help fight against malaria.

The cost of a path to a polio free world

has exceeded $10 billion.

But since Gavi was founded,

the number of children under the age of five dying

in low and middle-income countries has dropped by about 40%,

and they immunized 100 million children in 2018.

Well, I'm very lucky.

I get to go out and see that now

the all the world's children are getting these vaccines,

that that's making such a difference.

Before the UK and our foundation founded Gavi,

kids didn't get these vaccines for diarrhea and pneumonia

and the deaths were twice as high.

And so I wish all the British taxpayers

could go out into these countries and see what's gone on

with the different diseases and see that impact,

see that polio's literally on the verge of eradication,

so that instead of 400,000 children a year being paralyzed,

now we'll get that number down to zero,

and we'll save all that preventative treatment.

That's really quite phenomenal.

And I don't think people understand

it's their aid generosity

combined with good delivery systems

that has led to this phenomenal resource.

Meanwhile, polio cases have almost disappeared.

More recently, in April 2018, Gates announced

that he was teaming with Google co-founder Larry Page

to provide $12 million in funding

for a universal flu vaccine.

Although some questioned whether $12 million

would be enough to spark any real medical breakthroughs,

others praise the intentions behind the investment,

while Gates indicated that there could be more to come.

Gates also supported the development of drugs and vaccines

for livestock diseases,

so that the growing population can be fed properly.

And the benefit of that

is that these societies become stable.

They can take care of themselves.

So it's an investment in the future,

whether you care about terrorism or epidemics

or perhaps most importantly, the humanitarian benefit.

A lot of countries are continuing to increase the rate.

And that's a fantastic thing.

There's a few like Italy that need to be called out,

because they're cutting the rate,

and that hurts the poorest,

because these dollars are very, very impactful.

We've gotta have the health systems everywhere

so that we can see pandemic diseases getting started

and stop them early.

With Ebola we were lucky.

It didn't spread as fast as diseases

that we'll face in the future.

And so having those health systems there

is protecting health of even the rich countries.

The kind of stability that we need,

so we don't have civil war,

and we feel like we have huge migration crises.

We have to send the army in.

If you can do that by improving cultural productivity,

that's a fantastic thing.

Even though there's a big drought in Ethiopia right now,

because of the increased agricultural productivity,

it's largely been able to feed its own population,

because the productivity in the West

is now helping out there in the East.

And so this constant improvement

in food production, education, health,

that means that the risks coming in

from all these other places will be greatly reduced.

He committed $40 million to GALVmed

to continue its work on preventing livestock diseases

and improving quality of food and nutrition.

Gates believes that health systems need to be everywhere

to prevent diseases and reduce risk.

Helping poorest countries benefits the rich countries too.

For him, philanthropists have a duty to tackle hunger

and better healthcare in these countries,

as they're totally dependent

on such donations and generosity.

He raises awareness about the importance

of raising money to fix such issues.

Well, I think over time,

we're gonna see more of those people

giving their money away.

In fact, we've been talking

to a whole host of people in the United States

just about how much we've enjoyed the giving,

how much we're seeing progress around the world,

how much it's been a journey for us as a couple.

And so I think you're seeing

more and more people come forward.

We have 40 other couples signed up in the United States

who have pledged to give away over 50% of their wealth.

That's huge.

We're talking to couples in India and in China.

I think that will come along over time.

But you have to have show progress.

And I think that's one of the incredible things.

It's not just private philanthropy,

it's the pounds that come from the British government

for us to be able to say, "Look, these childhood deaths

"are dropping because of these amazing investments

"that have been made."

And when people see that progress, they say,

"Oh, I could actually do something,

"I wanna be a part of that."

Melinda and I are very lucky.

We were born in a wealthy country.

We got great education.

We got great health things.

And billions of people do not have that.

And there's no particular reason

why we should and others shouldn't,

but poverty and the fact that you're trapped,

when your health is so bad,

and it ironically means your population growth is very high.

That is unfair.

And so we didn't wanna burden our children with it.

They'll maybe ask us several times why,

but we want them to make their own way.

And so we've picked the things,

and we think it's incredible.

We found things where the impact per dollar

is way beyond what we expected.

When you're out in a village and you meet a mother,

and she says, "My gosh, because of something

"that you all have invested in, my child is alive.

"My child is alive, and I can plan on this child

"living till their fifth birthday.

"And I can now work on my farm and put my child in school."

That's an incredibly amazing feeling,

when you're out in the world.

However, while calling

for continued improvement in international aid development,

he states that we need to acknowledge

the progress made so far.

It's good news that you can actually get rid of a disease,

that you can cut childhood death in half,

that we can take that malnutrition, which holds Africa back

and solve it by helping them grow more food.

Produce aid is achieving incredible results.

Everyone in the field, working together,

and we learn, we see the biggest successes,

we follow on from that.

So it's a very dynamic business,

but when we say how many children are surviving,

what we've done with malaria, neglected disease,

the progress has been phenomenal.

Childhood death has been cut in half.

Now we wanna cut it in half again,

but that's quite an achievement.

The progress on HIV is perhaps,

according to him, the most astonishing.

Since The Global Fund was created,

deaths have fallen by more than a half.

It was when I started coming

to Africa regularly for the foundation,

that I got to know Nelson Mandela personally.

AIDS was one of the first issues our foundation worked on,

and Nelson Mandela was both an advisor and an inspiration,

but Nelson Mandela was concerned about the future.

He believed people could make the future

better than the past.

And so that's what I wanna focus on

for the remainder of my talk,

what can South Africa become?

What can Africa become?

What can the world become,

and what must we do to make it that way?

Gates saw that there was a possibility

for improvement in innovation.

And he believes in the economic potential of countries

with high levels of malnutrition

to do more to tackle the problem.

By pulling the funding from donors like the US and the UK,

he's working hard to make sure

that medical aid has a great continuous impact.

And he keeps making sure the resources are there

to produce pioneering work.

In 2017, the foundation launched the first

of its annual Goalkeepers Report,

which examines the progress made

in important public health areas

including child mortality, malnutrition, and HIV.

For Gates, it is important that money goes

where the great scientists are.

The UK is a fantastic place to back science.

He claimed the US and the UK

are where the best science can be found today,

which is why he has invested more than a billion dollars

in their research and institutions.

He praises the UK for its commitment,

saying it sends a great message.

And he gives a sense of engagement

with the world of optimism and a belief

that their approach can make a huge difference.

Since I've been involved in health and development,

the UK has maintained its commitment

to helping people in low-income countries.

Not only that, but you have set the standard

for being strategic about how you help.

You're innovative and rigorous

about getting the highest possible return

on your aid investment.

So if you put these two trends together,

innovation and generosity,

you get world-class Scottish agricultural science,

helping hundreds of millions

of the poorest people in the world transform their lives.

In the United States, I take every opportunity I can

to make the case that foreign aid

is both the right and smart thing to do.

I follow the UK Aid debate closely

and I'm convinced that the same arguments apply here.

UK Aid is good for Britain and good for the world.

I wish more people in your country and mine

could see the results.

There are so many incredible institutions here

that are both inventing these drugs and vaccines

and are really gaining the experience.

You know, this country is making a huge difference.

His attentions come from a greater vision

and hope for a better present and future.

He once declared, "We have to find a way

"to make the aspects of capitalism

"that serve wealthier people serve poor people as well."

British government is very generous in this.

And I think when taxpayers see that it's money well-spent,

that it can achieve a goal like this,

that they are willing to have a few percent of their taxes

go to these causes.

And Britain is a great partner in this.

And the UK government is to be thanked

that as they made trade-offs,

helping the poorest in the most effective way

was something that they were able to preserve.

And that set an example for other governments

on aid generosity.

Certainly the US is gonna be big on this polio campaign.

It takes actually billions of dollars to get this done.

My foundation will be a big giver to this,

but we'll have, I think, 16 different countries

that are backing it.

And the British voters should be proud

of their participation in something important like this.

Gates is contributing to society in a major way

and it doesn't stop here.

He also invested $50 million in 2017

in Alzheimer's research.

And the foundation also tackles domestic issues

such as helping students in the United States

become college-ready by granting funds

to learning institutions and libraries

and supporting scholarships at universities.

He also has plans of building a smart city in Arizona

with futuristic infrastructures and cutting edge technology

in which he invested $80 million.

Gates is also fighting climate change.

He has urged governments and the private sector

to invest in research and development

to make clean, reliable energy cheaper.

He's invested $2 billion of his own money

in clean energy innovation.

In 2018, Gates was heartbroken by the passing

of one of his oldest and dearest childhood friend

and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The brilliant technologist and philanthropist

had left Microsoft in 1983

after a falling out with Gates and Steve Ballmer.

He died of cancer at age 65.

Without him, Gates believes

the largest software company in the world

would never have existed.

Even though Gates led Microsoft to where it stands today,

Allen played a crucial role in creating the company.

Their relationship throughout the years was tumultuous.

Allen recalled one day overhearing Gates

trying to reduce his stake in Microsoft,

but the plan failed as he hanged on to it.

However, their relationship mended.

Gates stood beside him during his cancer treatment.

"He was everything you'd want from a friend",

Allen wrote in his memoir.

Surround yourself with the right people,

and you can accomplish great things

is the lesson Gates has learned from their friendship.

A more difficult pathogen could come along,

a form of flu, a form of SARS

or some type of virus that we haven't seen before.

And so asking ourselves, are we as prepared for that?

We don't know it will happen, but it's high enough chance

that one of the lessons of it all should be

to ask ourselves, are we as ready for that as we should be?

In a TED Talk from 2015, he foresaw the future,

when he urged the world to prepare for war

against a global pandemic.

After years of warning, the world was not ready.

He saw his ominous words come true

with the outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020.

In March 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

teamed with the Wellcome Trust and Mastercard

to pledge $125 million toward efforts to curb the outbreak.

And Gates revealed that his foundation was prepared

to invest billions of dollars into building factories

for the development of a vaccine.

On March 13th, 2020, Microsoft announced Gates

definitely left his board positions at Microsoft

to dedicate his efforts in philanthropic endeavors.

In September 2020, his father passed away

leaving Gates with a painful feeling of grief,

but also gratitude.

He said that his generosity, wisdom, empathy and humility

has had huge influence on people around the world,

but mostly on him.

Gates looked up to him and wrote a note,

remembering his father.

"He was everything I try to be.

"I will miss him every day."

And you know, so that's exacting.

And so, in fact, in the latest drought

where Ethiopia had less rains than those two,

was actually very small.

Bill Gates has received numerous awards

for his philanthropic work.

Time Magazine named him one of the most influential people

of the 20th century.

It also named Gates and his wife Melinda,

along with rock band U2 lead singer Bono

as the 2005 persons of the year.

He was knighted as an Honorary Knight Commander

of the Order of the British Empire,

bestowed by queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

In 2016, the couple were again recognized

for their philanthropic work,

when they were named recipients

of the presidential Medal of Freedom

by President Barack Obama.

Bill Gates has a vast fortune,

but he's fighting to make the world a better place

by making good use of his money,

investing in the right places

and into organizations he believes in.

He and Melinda are now renowned

for their outstanding charitable work.

They have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

The impact Bill Gates has had

on the tech society is undeniable.

The impact of his foundation is phenomenal.

Aid has made a huge difference.

From a loner schoolboy dropout

to multibillionaire tech giant,

Bill Gates has had a long journey, and it is not over.

At 65 years old and with a hope

of making a positive impact in the world,

he continues to use all the resources in his power

to end poverty and suffering.

Our foundation wants to do its part.

And so I'm pleased to announce to you

that we're pledging an additional billion dollars to-

Thank you.

From him we learn that time is valuable

and is necessary to move fast.

He strives for continuous innovation

with ambition, persistence, and perseverance.

He shows us that we can achieve great things.

Success didn't make him arrogant, but wise.

He remained humble, claiming from a young age

that he is not a genius.

His optimistic and confrontational attitude,

his determination and patience makes him a great example.

Bill Gates has made an impact on millions of lives

and his accomplishments are meaningful and significant.

If his goal was to place a computer in every home,

we can probably say that he has reached it.

In 2015 there were more than one billion PCs worldwide.

If his other goal was to push others to be ambassadors

for a better world and save lives,

we can say that he has reached it too.

So we can salute Bill Gates

for his contribution to the world

and his remarkable journey,

as he will probably go down as one of the most successful

and influential people of the 21st century.