Bill Gates was reportedly on the verge of tears at last week’s ‘billionaire summer camp’ as he ‘fessed up to messing up’ his marriage to soon-to-be-ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
The billionaire philanthropist opened up about his pending divorce to his wife of 27 years during an ‘off the record’ question-and-answer session at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho last week, the New York Post reported.
‘He fessed up to messing up,’ one of the attendees told the Post.
‘He basically referred to the fact that it [the divorce] was his fault.’
The source added: ‘He did seem a bit emotional about it. He might have been on the verge of tears.’
Bill Gates is seen right alongside Chubb Limited CEO Evan Greenberg at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on Thursday
Gates was reportedly on the verge of tears at last week’s ‘billionaire summer camp’ as he ‘fessed up to messing up’ his marriage to soon-to-be-ex-wife Melinda French Gates
Gates, 65, came under scrutiny after he and Melinda Gates announced their divorce in May and reports emerged of his alleged extramarital affairs. Melinda, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is seen above in Paris on June 30
Gates reportedly did not refer to an ‘affair’ as the reason for the divorce.
Another person who was in attendance and reportedly heard Gates speak said that the tech mogul was ‘very moving.’
But others who were in Sun Valley reported that Gates seemed ‘agitated’ during his stay, particularly when others at the conference approached him in an attempt to strike up a conversation.
‘Bill Gates was pretty much a total a*****e,’ one attendee told the Post.
Gates, 65, came under scrutiny after he and Melinda Gates announced their divorce in May and reports emerged of his alleged extramarital affairs and concerns over the nature of his relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Four Microsoft employees accused Gates, a co-founder of the company and its former CEO, of being an office ‘bully’ whose catchphrase was ‘that’s the stupidest f*****g idea I’ve ever heard’ and claimed he pursued sexual affairs with employees and journalists.
A former Microsoft executive who spoke on condition of anonymity told Insider last month that ‘having a meeting with Bill was just an opportunity to get yelled at, so I tried to avoid that.’
Melinda Gates herself was an employee at Microsoft, having been hired as a product manager in 1987, when the billionaire first asked her out months after flirting with her at a conference dinner.
In 2006, Bill Gates allegedly asked a female Microsoft employee out to dinner in an email after attending a presentation she had given, The New York Times reported.
Gates had an alleged affair with a married woman 13 years older than him when he was 27 years old
‘If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,’ Gates wrote in the email obtained by The New York Times.
A Gates Foundation employee told the outlet that the billionaire asked her on a date while they were at a cocktail party in New York.
‘I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?’ Gates allegedly told the woman.
In the 1992 biography Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, author James Wallace revealed Gates had an alleged affair with a married woman 13 years older than him when he was 27 years old.
Gates’ alleged affair was with the wife of an Osborne Computer executive who lived abroad, according to the biography.
An Osborne Computer executive who knew about the alleged affair told Wallace that ‘Bill had a real fondness for older women then.’
Adam Osborne, who developed the first commercially successful PC known as Osborne 1, allegedly demanded that Gates stop seeing the wife of his employee.
‘Gates told Osborne to mind his own business,’ Wallace wrote.
Gates himself told BBC that he would hack his school’s scheduling software to ensure he would be the only boy in class.
‘I was the one who benefited by being able to have the nice girls at least sit near me. It wasn’t that I could talk to them or anything, but they were there,’ Gates said.
Wallace told Insider that, while Gates attended Harvard University in 1973, he would allegedly visit strip clubs in an area of Boston once referred to as the Combat Zone because of its notorious strip clubs, porn theaters, and prostitution.
Gates himself admitted to frequenting the area, centered on Washington Street between Boylston Street and Kneeland Street, in a 1994 interview he did with Playboy magazine.
‘Just because I went there doesn’t mean I engaged in everything that was going on,’ Gates said.
‘I ate pizza, read books and watched what was going on. I went to the diners.’
Wallace claimed to Insider that Gates’ penchant for socializing with women remained even after he started dating Melinda Gates in 1987.
Bill Gates is pictured in a 1977 police mugshot when he was arrested for bad careless driving in Albuqerque, New Mexico
Gates was allegedly known to invite friends to swim naked at his bachelor pad in Laurelhurst where he ’rounded up’ dancers from local all-nude nightclubs, Wallace said.
‘I don’t know if he physically transported them or if he just told them where to show up,’ Wallace told the outlet.
Robert X. Cringely, who wrote a popular computer gossip column for InfoWorld, told Insider that Gates was allegedly often inebriated at tech events and after-parties and that he ‘got drunk pretty easily.’
‘All of us will have been at some affair where Bill was clearly impaired. He was happier’ drunk, Cringely said.
Gates, then 33, took a helicopter to Les Arcs ski resort in the French Alps for an international sales meeting for Microsoft in the summer of 1988 where he was allegedly caught lying on top of a woman on the lawn.
The pair were ‘just snuggling’ after Gates joined his employees for drinks in a Swiss chalet and partied until the early morning, Dan Graves, a former Microsoft export manager, told Insider.
After he started dating Melinda, Gates allegedly struggled to commit to her and she was allegedly aware of his ‘womanizing,’ the outlet reported. The couple even broke up for at least a year early in their relationship.
‘Bill wanted to be married, but he didn’t know whether he could actually commit to it and have Microsoft,’ Melinda said in an interview for the Netflix docuseries Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.
Even after marrying Melinda, Gates told Time magazine in 1997 that he still went on annual vacations to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad, the software entrepreneur whom he had dated from 1984 to 1987.
Bill and Melinda Gates’ personal affairs have been managed by Watermark Estate Management since at least 2001, which would allegedly arrange Gates’ annual beach trips with Winblad.
Meanwhile, Gates is reported to have taken meetings with Epstein including a flight to Palm Beach on Epstein’s private plane.
Gates’ spokesperson told the outlet that Gates had ‘absolutely no business partnership or personal friendship’ with Epstein, and any meetings between the two were about philanthropy.
‘It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many lies published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’s divorce,’ the spokesperson said.
Bill Gates, not pictured, still went on annual vacations to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad, pictured, the software entrepreneur whom he had dated from 1984 to 1987, even after marrying Melinda Gates
Bill Gates, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, are pictured in 1987. Allen said in his memoir that Gates tried to dilute his equity in the company because he was ‘unproductive’ while dealing with his first bout of cancer
‘The rumors and speculation surrounding Mr. Gates are becoming increasingly absurd and it’s unfortunate that people who have little to no knowledge are being characterized as “sources”.’
Gates’ relationship with Epstein reportedly dates back to 2011, but it became a point of contention for the couple in September 2013, the Daily Beast reported.
Melinda Gates reportedly told friends she was furious about their alleged friendship and wanted nothing to do with Epstein but sources said Bill Gates allegedly visited Epstein’s house numerous times.
Bill Gates even reportedly talked about his ‘toxic’ marriage to Epstein who allegedly gave Gates advice on ending his marriage, according to the Daily Beast.
Wallace claimed to Insider that ‘there were some big-name journalists who knew about this behavior’ over the years.
However, they ‘never reported on it because they knew Microsoft would have taken away their access,’ he said.
Gates allegedly even gained a reputation for hitting on female reporters who covered industry conferences such as Comdex, Wallace said.
‘The journalists said that it was their understanding that they weren’t the only ones either,’ he added.
Stories about Gates have allegedly been kept quiet over the years but ‘the halo broke’ when Melinda divorced Gates, a Microsoft employee told Insider.
‘Anyone who had stories could bring all those stories out,’ the source said.
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