The pair announced their divorce on Monday via Twitter.
In the joint statement, the Gates wrote, “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.”
“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives,” they said.
The split comes two years after another leading American billionaire and philanthropist, Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, said that he and his then-wife, MacKenzie, were getting divorced.
Gates, a dropout of Harvard University started Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and he owned 49% of Microsoft at its initial public offering in 1986, according to Reuters.
After an executive tenure in which he helped transform the company into one of the world’s leading technology firms, Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 to focus on philanthropy. He remained chairman until 2014 and left the company’s board in March 2020.
Gates’ spouse, who recently began referring to herself as Melinda French Gates on most websites and social media, was raised in Dallas and studied computer science and economics at Duke University. She later joined Microsoft, where she met her future husband.
