Tech billionaire Bill Gates has confessed to the biggest regret of his life that means any other ‘failures don’t matter’.
The 69-year-old is the former chief executive officer of Microsoft, having co-founded the software company in 1975 with his childhood pal Paul Allen.
Gates is now worth an estimated $107 billion, while he and his ex-wife Melinda have donated a combined total of $59 billion to charitable causes through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
That said, the Microsoft co-founder has sometimes been a controversial figure.
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He has admitted to meeting with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein a number of times.
Melinda described Epstein as 'abhorrent' and 'evil' to Gayle King on CBS Mornings back in 2021, and said he 'unsettled' her on the one occasion the pair met.
Bill told the Wall Street Journal: "I think I was quite stupid. I thought it would help me with global health philanthropy. In fact, it failed to do that it was just a huge mistake."
Meanwhile, Gates' spokesperson Bridgitt Arnold told the Washington Post the tech billionaire had an extramarital affair with a Microsoft employee 'which ended amicably'.
This resulted in an investigation at Microsoft shortly before Gates stepped down from the board, although Arnold said the affair had nothing to do with his departure.
However, neither of these are what Gates recently cited as his biggest regret
He told the Sunday Times the mistake he 'most regrets' is the breakdown of his marriage with Melinda.
The billionaire married Melinda French in 1994, after dating for several years. The pair had met when she began working at Microsoft in the 80s and now share three children together.
They however divorced in 2021 and Gates admits he isn’t happy with how the 27-year marriage ended.
He told the Times that he may be ‘more cheerful now’ and in a relationship with Paula Hurd, but despite having experienced other failures throughout his life, the divorce is ‘at the top of the list’.
“There are others, but none that matter,” Gates added. “The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years.”
Melinda told Gayle King there ‘wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened’ in leading to their divorce and said: “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it wasn’t healthy and I couldn’t trust what we had.”
She also echoed her ex-husband’s sentiment that getting a divorce is a ‘hard thing’ and ‘painful’ to go through.
While he has regret over how their marriage ended, Gates said the pair have stayed on good times and ‘see each other’.
“We have three kids and two grandchildren so there are family events. The kids are doing well. They have good values,” he added.
Topics: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Sex and Relationships
Jess Battison