Bill Gates Forks Over Jaw-Dropping Sum to Ex-Wife Years After Divorce
The billionaire made a donation to Melinda’s charity that only he could afford.
LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made an astonishing $7.88 billion donation to his ex-wife Melinda French Gates’ charity well after their divorce, according to a new report.
The 70-year-old billionaire, worth $118 billion, gave the incredible sum to Melinda’s Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation in 2024, three years after the couple split in 2021. The New York Times reported the donation on Friday after reviewing a tax filing.
Melinda French Gates divorced from Bill Gates in 2021.
Brian Ach/(Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for The Lasker Foundation)
Though Bill and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021, they co-chaired the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation until 2024. When French Gates, 61, resigned from the charity in May 2024, she said in a statement that Bill would give her “$12.5 billion to commit to my work for women and families.”
Friday’s report confirms that Gates paid about two-thirds of that sum in 2024. Pivotal Philanthropies, which focuses on numerous women’s issues, such as women in the workplace and women’s mental health, confirmed to the Times that Gates had “fulfilled” the entire $12.5 billion obligation.
Bill Gates called his divorce his biggest regret in life.
BAY ISMOYO/Bay Ismoyo/AFP via Getty Images
The Times speculated that the additional $4.6 billion could have been donated in 2025 and is thus not yet available to review. It could also have been donated to one of French Gates’ corporate entities, such as her limited-liability company Pivotal Ventures, which does not file a tax return.
The donation made Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation one of the largest charities in America. The nascent charity, founded by French Gates in 2022 after her divorce, ended 2023 with $604 million. At the end of 2024, after Gates’ donation and Pivotal’s own philanthropic work, it had $7.4 billion on hand.
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Representatives for Gates and French Gates did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage. Melinda began meeting with divorce lawyers in 2019 after Bill’s ties to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became public. Gates was among the powerful figures pictured in the DOJ’s December 2025 release of some Epstein files.
Bill Gates appeared in the DOJ's release of some of the Epstein files.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
In January of 2025, Bill Gates told The Times of London that his divorce from Melinda was “the mistake I most regret.” Gates had an affair with a Microsoft employee 20 years before he and Melinda separated, which Melinda admitted was a factor in their divorce.
“Both partners have to be honest with one another, and if you can’t, you can’t have intimacy, and you can’t have trust,” French Gates said during an April appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “And so in the end, I had to go.”
Melinda Gates went public with her relationship to Philip Vaughn, chairman of Seattle-based beer app Tavour, in October of 2025.
Taylor Hill/Getty Images
Bill and Melinda have three children together and one grandchild. In 2025, Melinda revealed she was dating Philip Vaughn, the 48-year-old chairman of Tavour, a Seattle-based beer app.
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