“After much thinking and hard work in our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.” With those words, Bill and Melinda Gates announced the end of their relationship via Twitter. The couple were married for 27 years.
“We no longer believe that we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives,” they added.
The case of the founder of Microsoft, the fourth richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $ 145.8 billion, joins that of other great technology moguls, such as Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Craig McCaw and John McAfee. All with similarities, all with a lot of media coverage and millions of dollars in between. But in addition to their money, made thanks to their knowledge of technology, these tycoons have another similarity: they all ended up divorced or separated from their wives or partners.
1. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates (65 years old) is one of the most influential and important technological developers of the last decades.
Entrepreneur, computer scientist and philanthropist, he is the creator and founder of Microsoft, and the Windows operating system, together with Paul Allen.
REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo
During the development of the coronavirus, a TED talk began to circulate where Gates announced the existence of a pandemic like the one we are experiencing. In addition, participate in the creation of a vaccine.
Together with Melinda Gates, they formed a marriage that had an important social role, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
However, everything came to an end. This Monday they announced that they will be divorced.
Despite the separation, in their statement they also indicated that they will continue working on their foundation, which fights poverty and infectious diseases, among other things.
Gates met Melinda, who is now 56 years old, when she worked at Microsoft in 1987, the year in which she graduated with a degree in computer science.
They were married in 1994, but the story, 27 years later, and with three children, came to an end.
2. Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon
Like Bill Gates, the announcement of the separation of Jeff Bezos was on Twitter. It happened in April 2019 after 25 years of marriage to MacKenzie Bezos.
“Grateful to have completed the process of dissolving my marriage to Jeff with mutual support and from everyone who approached us with kindness,” the woman wrote.
As usually happens in these cases, after agreeing on the sentimental and marital aspect, the economic sphere comes. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is the richest man in the world since 2017. His fortune is estimated at $ 113 billion, according to Forbes.
The couple decided that Jeff would keep 75% of Amazon and MacKenzie with 4%. The rest belongs to other individuals.
In addition, the executive also maintained ownership of the Washington Post newspaper and its space exploration company, Blue Origin.
But, beyond the figures, what motivated this media separation? Everything indicates that it would be an infidelity. According to the tabloid National Enquirer, Jeff Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a former television host.
3. Steve Jobs never invited her to dinner.
Known is the origin story of Apple and Macintosh. Many movies and books have emerged about it. They all have Steve Jobs as their central axis.
And it is that Jobs, is cataloged as the creative genius of the company that revolutionized technology and computing in the 70s and 80s.
The company today has revenues of more than US $ 274,515 million.
However, it was not all joy for Jobs, who died of cancer in 2011.
Regarding his love life, his multiple biographies indicate that he had a great love: the now writer Chrisann Brennan, who was a partner of the businessman in his youth and mother of his first daughter Lisa (name he gave to his first computer), already the one you didn’t initially recognize. Today Lisa is 42 years old.
Brennan tells in a publication about Jobs, how the relationship between the two was wearing away quickly during the first years. “We never went out to dinner,” says the author.
In 1991 Jobs married Laurene Powell, whom he met at Stanford University. They lived in Palo Alto, California, with their three children. He was with her until her death.
Powell currently heads the Laurene Powell Jobs Trust, formerly known as the Steven P. Jobs Trust, which holds 130-140 million shares (7–8%) in The Walt Disney Company, making it its largest individual shareholder. He is among the 40 richest people in the world.
4. John McAfee, the controversial creator of antivirus
The story of the controversial antivirus creator who bears his surname is completely different from the previous ones. Born in Scotland in 1945, John McAfee hasn’t had the life that tech leaders commonly have.
By the 1960s, he worked as a professor at Luisana State University, which nevertheless ended his doctorate in mathematics after it was revealed that he had slept with a student whom he was a mentor.
He later married her and McAfee began working with some of the biggest tech organizations of the time, but his fondness for prostitutes and drugs ended up breaking his marriage in the 1980s.
He asserts that he has 47 children due to his extramarital affairs.
He worked as a programmer at the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York, then at Univac as a software designer, and then at Xerox as an operating system architect.
In the 1980s, while working at Lockheed, McAfee received a copy of the Brain virus and began developing software to combat these malware.
It was the first to distribute antivirus software using the shareware business model (software distribution modality, in which the user can evaluate the product for free, but with limited time or limited functions). In 1989, he resigned from Lockheed and started working at his own antivirus company, McAfee Associates.
After selling the company for more than $ 100 million, his life changed dramatically in the 1990s. And the problems began.
He has been charged with murder, smuggling, illegal possession of weapons, sale of drugs, tax debt.
In between, he proclaimed himself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
In the midst of one of his many adventures, he had to escape to Guatemala, and then he was deported to the United States.
As he revealed, during the first night after returning to the US, he met his ex-wife (top photo), Janice McAfee, in Miami Beach, after she offered him her services as a prostitute.
They married shortly after and began living on a ranch in Tennessee, although today they are separated.
5. Craig McCaw, pioneer of the cell phone
He was married to Wendy Petrak from 1974 to 1997. He had to pay $ 500 million. A year later he married again.
This time with Susan Rasinski, investment banker and former US ambassador to Austria. They have three children together. In 2019 they divorced.
The story corresponds to businessman Craig McCaw, founder of the McCaw Cellular company and Clearwire Corporation. He is considered one of the pioneers in the cell phone industry.
Son of John Elroy McCaw, magnate of the world of radio and television. Craig started out as a door-to-door cable TV subscription salesman.
After the death of his father, the only inheritance he left was a small company in the same field. In the 1980s, McCaw Cablevision positioned itself as the 20th largest cable operator in the US.
During that same decade the expansion of cellular telephony in the United States began and McCaw knew how to capitalize on it. Together with his brother, he sold the cable company and they dedicated themselves to this new technology.
In 1990, McCaw was America’s highest-paid CEO.
In 1994, he worked with Bill Gates to form Teledesic, with an ambitious plan to form a broadband satellite communications system with nearly 300 Earth-orbiting satellites b.
That same year, it sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T Corporation for $ 11.5 billion. A year later it bought Nextel, growing significantly.
Currently, through Clearwire Corporation, a telecommunications operator, it reaches more than 110 million people.
