TheNewsGuru

Tag: Bill Gates

  • BREAKING: Bill Gates reclaims World Richest title, as Bezos drops

    Microsoft’s boss, Bill Gates has reclaimed his World Richest person title from the Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who briefly overtook him yesterday.

    As at yesterday, a real-time billionaires’ index compiled by Forbes shows how Bezos overtook Bill Gates on Thursday with a fortune topping $90 billion for the first time ever.

    “When markets opened on Thursday, Bezos had a net worth of $90.6 billion, putting him $500 million ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Amazon stock opened up 1.6% on Thursday, adding $1.4 billion to Bezos’ net worth. That was enough to put him ahead of Gates, who was last surpassed on Forbes’ real-time rankings for just two days nearly a year ago by Spanish retail giant Amancio Ortega.” Forbes reports.

    But an updated Forbes report states that as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern, Jeff Bezos had dropped below Bill Gates on Forbes’ Real-Time Ranking, and Gates ended the day as the world’s richest person.

    Also, recall TheNewsGuru had earlier published that the surge in Amazon.com shares yesterday morning in advance of the online retailer’s earnings report was what propelled Bezos past Bill Gates.

    Shares of the online retailer rose 1.3 percent to $1,065.92 at 10:10 a.m. in New York, giving Bezos a net worth of $90.9 billion, versus $90.7 billion for Gates.

    Meanwhile, Bezos according to Forbes would be nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy.

    “Gates, who created the Giving Pledge with Buffett to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, had given away $31.1 billion over the course of his lifetime through end of 2016. ”

     

  • Mark Zuckerberg gets $3.5 billion richer in the last five days

    Recent financial reports show that Facebook founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mark Zuckerberg got $3.5 billion richer in the last five days.

    This is an outstanding feat considering the fact that there is a global outcry of financial lack in every nook and cranny.

    Forbes reports that the shares of Facebook, which have risen nearly 40% since the start of 2017, continue to gain altitude, and that expectations of strong second-quarter earnings, to be announced at the end of the month, has helped drive Facebook stock to an all-time high on Friday.

    That surge has further padded the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg, who holds roughly 17% of Facebook’s outstanding shares and a majority of its voting power, to go higher by $3.5 billion richer in the last five days, Forbes said.

    Just 33 years old, Zuckerberg is now worth an estimated $66.7 billion – a record high – according to Forbes’ real-time rankings of the world’s billionaires. He is the sixth-richest person on the planet and the only thirty-something to rank in the top 50.

    Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 as a 19-year-old student at Harvard; he later dropped out as a sophomore. The business, which began as a small social networking platform for Ivy League universities, now has more than 2 billion monthly active users.

    Zuckerberg was not the only technology billionaire to have a lucrative week.

    The net worth of Bill Gates, the planet’s wealthiest individual, rose $900 million to an estimated $90 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also did spectacularly well; his fortune jumped $1.9 billion, to an estimated $85.2 billion. He remains the world’s second-richest person.

     

  • Facebook founder, Zuckerberg goes back to school after dropping out 12 years ago

    Facebook founder, Zuckerberg goes back to school after dropping out 12 years ago

    Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard dropout and CEO of a company worth nearly $400 billion, will be getting a college degree more than a decade after leaving his classes behind.

    The Facebook co-founder and chief executive left Harvard’s undergraduate computer science program in the fall of 2005 to devote himself full-time to building the young social network, which even then was seeing meteoric growth.

    Now, 12 years later, Zuckerberg will be giving the commencement address to Harvard’s class of 2017 May 25th, and nabbing an honorary degree in the process.

    The news was first announced March 7 in a post on Harvard’s website, according to The Verge.

    “Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership has profoundly altered the nature of social engagement worldwide. Few inventions in modern times can rival Facebook in its far-reaching impact on how people around the globe interact with one another,” The Verge quotes Harvard President Drew Faust as saying.

    “And few individuals can rival Mark Zuckerberg in his drive to change our world through the innovative use of technology, as well as his commitment to advance science, enhance education, and expand opportunity through the pursuit of philanthropy,” the Harvard President added.

    Yesterday, Zuckerberg took to his Facebook page to confirm the development.

    https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10103731591158201/

    “My dad took this video when I got accepted to Harvard. Next week I’m going back for commencement to get my degree,” Zuckerberg said.

    “That was definitely not my plan. Although before I went to college, my mom bet me I’d drop out and my younger sister bet me she’d finish college before me. I bet them I’d get a degree. Now I suppose the cycle is complete,” the Facebook boss further stated in a reply to a comment on the Facebook post.

    In another response, Zuckerberg revealed the commencement date to be Thursday 25 May 2017.

    Zuckerberg is of course not the first big name in Silicon Valley to have dropped out and gone on to find success.

    Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College in Oregon before starting his company with Steve Wozniak in 1976.

    Bill Gates, a fellow Harvard dropout, also left school after just two years to co-found Microsoft with Paul Allen. Because of their shared history, Zuckerberg even made a slightly cringe-worthy video with Gates in which the younger entrepreneur asks the older, wiser Microsoft alum for tips on writing his commencement speech.

    Gates gave a commencement speech to Harvard 10 years ago, which Zuckerberg watched from the crowd incidentally because his future wife, Priscilla Chan, was graduating that year.