Bill Gates Is Much Poorer This Year

Lintao Zhang / Getty Images News via Getty Images Among the 20 richest people in the world, only one has lost ground on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Bill Gates has lost $40 billion in net worth so far in 2025. One reason for this decline is that he has sold a great deal of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) stock. Steve Ballmer, who followed Gates as Microsoft CEO, has kept most, if not all, of his Microsoft shares and has a net worth of $178 billion. That puts him in eighth place on the list. Gates ranks ...