If he remained "faithful" to Microsoft, how rich would Bill Gates be?

If Bill Gates still holds all the shares of the company he founded since Microsoft went public until now, he will hold a huge fortune, far surpassing Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.Microsoft’s stock price has seen strong growth in 2023. Currently, Microsoft’s shares are trading at 366.68 USD/share, up 52% compared to the beginning of the year. 2023, making Microsoft the second largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization (at 2.73 trillion), second only to Apple (valued at 2.87 trillion).

With stocks having strong growth momentum today, many people have asked how rich Bill Gates would become if he did not sell any shares, but still held all of his shares. Microsoft from the time the company officially went public until now?

Microsoft officially went public on March 13, 1986 and first became the world’s most valuable company in September 1998. At that time, founder Bill Gates held about 2.06 billion shares of the company.

If he remained “faithful” to Microsoft, Bill Gates would own a huge fortune at the present time (Illustration: Pinterest).

If Bill Gates has remained “faithful” to Microsoft from that time until now and has not sold any shares, up to the present time at a price of 366.68 billion USD/share (at the time the article was published). implementation), Bill Gates will hold assets of up to 755.3 billion USD.

This wealth is even more than the total assets of the 3 richest people in the world at the moment, including Elon Musk (205 billion USD), Jeff Bezos (167 billion USD) and Bernard Arnault (164 billion USD). .

Of course, all numbers are just hypothetical, because holding all the shares of a company, even if it is a company you founded, is impossible. Even Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos… regularly sell shares of the companies they founded.

During the process of leading Microsoft, Bill Gates sold the company’s shares many times and by the time he officially left the company’s board of directors in March 2020, Bill Gates sold the majority of shares in Microsoft, only holds about 1% of this company’s shares.

No need to hold too much Microsoft stock, Bill Gates still owns a fortune of up to 130 billion USD and is the fourth richest person in the world. This amount of assets is expected to be significantly larger if the amount of money he has donated to charity is included.

In addition to Microsoft, Bill Gates’ current assets also come from shares and stocks in many other companies he invested in, including auto retailer AutoNation, beverage company Coca-Cola, finance company Berkshire Hathaway or agricultural machinery manufacturing company Deere & Co…

If you invested $1,000 in Microsoft stock 10 years ago, how much money would you have today?

Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, but the company only became widely known when it launched the first Windows operating system on November 10, 1983. The Windows operating system with a more intuitive and friendly user interface helped computers become more popular and used by more people in the 1980s.

After the success of the Windows operating system, Microsoft officially went public on March 13, 1986, with a starting price of 21 USD/share. At the end of that day’s trading session, Microsoft’s stock price increased to $28.

To date, Microsoft’s stock price has increased 17.5 times, to 366.68 USD. That means if you invested 1,000 USD to buy Microsoft shares in 1986, the user would own an amount of 17,500 USD at the present time.

So if you bought Microsoft stock 10 years ago, how much money would you have today? According to CNBC, Microsoft’s current stock price has increased 854% compared to 10 years ago, meaning if you invested $1,000 in 2013, the amount has now increased to $8,540.

Of course, all numbers are hypothetical and for reference only, however, Microsoft still shows that the company is on the right track, creating confidence for investors, helping the company’s stock continue to grow. strong.