Melinda French Gates refuses to fund daughter's startup despite $31 billion net worth
The ex-wife of Bill Gates and longtime philanthropist, with a net worth of $31 billion, said she refused to fund her daughter's startup.
'I have a daughter who just started a business this year,' said French Gates, 60, during a recent talk with tennis legend Billie Jean King during the Power of Women's Sports Summit.
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'She got capitalized, not because of my contacts, not because of me. I wouldn't put money into it.'
The mom did not name the daughter, but Phoebe Gates, the youngest of her three children with the Microsoft founder, recently launched an AI-powered fashion app called Phia with her Stanford roommate, Sophia Kianni.
The platform compares clothing prices across 40,000 sites to help users find the best deals.
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'It is very, very hard to get your business funded if you're a woman,' French Gates said. 'And so you do have to learn a bit how to have the courage to play the game and to stick with it.'
French Gates has long invested in women's rights philanthropy, previously serving as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for nearly 25 years.
3 Melinda French Gates and Phoebe Gates at the 2024 Albie Awards.
FilmMagic
However, she said it's important that her daughter learns how to fund her startup the hard way.
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If this is a 'real business,' French Gates said, then others need to be willing to back it – and if not, her daughter will learn to handle rejection.
'That's what I told her. She's growing from this,' she added.
Phoebe, 22, didn't seem to mind getting the brush-off from her rich mom, who walked away from her 2021 divorce with an estimated $25 billion settlement.
'We don't want this to be something that's funded by my family – we want this to be a real company,' Phoebe, 22, told The Post earlier this year.
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'That's really important for us … while I have a ton of privilege coming from my family, it's about having a product that stands on its own.'
3 Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates in New York City.
Christopher Peterson / SplashNews.com
It's not the first time the family made it clear that they want their children to carve a name for themselves.
Bill Gates has previously said their three children – daughter Jennifer, 30, son Rory, 25, and Phoebe – would inherit 'less than 1%' of his fortune after his death.
While French Gates refused to contribute to Phia, and the company's funding remains private, Kris Jenner has publicly said she's backing the platform.
3 Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni discuss their platform Phia with the New York Post.
Brian Zak/NY Post
The recent Stanford graduates also launched a podcast in April called 'The Burnouts' on 'Call Her Daddy' founder Alex Cooper's Unwell Network, tracking their early entrepreneurial experiences.
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'A really critical piece of marketing is this founder-led growth and pulling back the curtain on what it's like to be a founder and to learn,' Phoebe told The Post at the time.
The daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates previously interned at British Vogue and has spoken publicly on reproductive rights at several events.
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Yahoo
34 minutes ago
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The College-Major Gamble
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here. When I was in college, the Great Recession was unfolding, and it seemed like I had made a big mistake. With the economy crumbling and job prospects going with it, I had selected as my majors … journalism and sociology. Even the professors joked about our inevitable unemployment. Meanwhile, a close friend had switched majors and started to take computer-science classes—there would obviously be opportunities there. But that conventional wisdom is starting to change. 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USA Today
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Oldest restaurant in Los Angeles, claimed creator of French dip, to close
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Here's all of the reported fallout, as it stands on July 8: Blizzard: Layoffs; Warcraft Rumble sunsetting Halo Studios: Layoffs affecting at least five people; we published a firsthand account of tension at the studio The Initiative: Studio closed; Perfect Dark remake canceled King: Layoffs affecting roughly 200 people, 10 percent of the studio Rare: Layoffs; creative director and Banjo-Kazooie creator Gregg Mayles is out after 35 years; Everwild canceled Raven Software: Layoffs Sledgehammer Games: Layoffs Turn 10: The Forza Motorsport team was gutted by layoffs and shut down; Turn 10 is now a Forza Horizon support studio ZeniMax Online Studios: Studio head Matt Firor is out after 18 years; Blackbird canceled Spencer said it in 2024 and it's still true today: The Xbox division is growing, with an eight percent yearly increase in revenue from Xbox content and services in the first three months of 2025. Still, for employees, it doesn't feel stable. This situation isn't unique to Microsoft, either: In May, Electronic Arts canceled its Black Panther game and closed the studio creating it, and this followed a previous culling at Respawn , which included canning a new Titanfall title, plus years of layoffs at BioWare. Meanwhile, EA CEO Andrew Wilson took home more than $25 million in the 2024 fiscal year. In 2024, 11 percent of developers across the industry were laid off, according to GDC's 2025 State of the Game Industry Survey . Statista reports the global games market is expected to grow yet again in 2025, generating more than $522 billion in revenue. Layoffs are a cruel solution to a shitty question, and at the moment , they form the backbone of the AAA industry. The world's largest studios function on a binge and purge cycle, with acquisitions , crunch and layoffs built into their business plans. This cadence is only becoming more chaotic as additional factors, like AI and consolidation, are converging to decrease hiring numbers and increase the scope of layoffs. At Microsoft, using the company's Copilot AI toolset is ' no longer optional ' for employees, and as one worker told me, 'They're trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.' Practices like these have helped propel unionization efforts across the industry, including at Xbox studios. 'We are deeply disappointed in Microsoft's decision to lay off thousands more workers, including union-represented CWA members, at a time when the company is prospering,' Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. said about the recent layoffs. He continued, 'Right now, we are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption. In times like these, union organizing is not just a tool for protections in the workplace; it is essential to workers' survival, and one of the strongest defenses we have against unchecked corporate power.' In addition to this most recent round of 9,000 layoffs, Microsoft fired 6,000 people across its divisions in May. The Xbox segment specifically lost more than 2,500 employees to layoffs in 2024, and Microsoft closed Arkane Austin , Alpha Dog Games and Tango Gameworks (though Krafton eventually scooped up Tango for itself, thankfully). The scattershot vibe of the closures, cancellations and layoffs — affecting productive and low-overhead studios like Tango, exciting new projects like Blackbird , and multiple proven ZeniMax teams — drives home the notion that Microsoft was always more interested in controlling these studios' IPs than supporting the developers that worked there. Layoffs are an answer to the question, 'How does this industry get back to growth?' Mass firings are not a function of artistic integrity or technological innovation, and they're antithetical to the process of actually building fresh and powerful video games. I've never asked myself how industry profits can grow, as a player or a critic. Only a small and very specific group of people have, and they don't speak for me. Unfortunately, they move for all of us. Helldivers 2 is heading to Xbox on August 26, ending its tenure as a PlayStation 5 console exclusive after a little more than one year. Helldivers 2 is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by PlayStation, so it wasn't guaranteed to come to Xbox platforms at all. To be clear, it's not due to be included in Game Pass any time soon. Since settling its launch issues in early 2024, Helldivers 2 has been quietly building up a sizable playerbase of intergalactic freedom fighters, with more than 15 million copies sold across PC and PS5. Naughty Dog co-founder Neil Druckmann is stepping back from the development of HBO's The Last of Us television series to focus on making games again. Druckmann is a co-creator of the show and he's been spending his time recently helping produce and write it at HBO, but now that the second season is done, he's returning his attention to the studio that started it all. 'Now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet ,' he said in a statement. Welcome back, Druckmann — as Engadget deputy news editor Nathan Ingraham put it, the video game industry is happy to see you again . Former Ubisoft executives Thomas Francois, Serge Hascoet and Guillaume Patrux were convicted in France of fostering a toxic workplace with rampant sexual and psychological abuse. Former chief creative officer Hascoet was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended, and Patrux received a 12-month suspended term. Francois was additionally found guilty of attempted sexual assault and received a suspended three-year prison sentence. This wraps up a multi-year investigation by French authorities into complaints of toxicity and gender-based harassment at Ubisoft. Sucker Punch will show off about 20 minutes of Ghost of Yōtei gameplay on Thursday, July 10, at 5PM ET during a dedicated State of Play event. I can't wait to watch that wind move . I've been looking forward to Time Flies since I buzzed my way through the demo at Summer Game Fest 2022. It's a ridiculous little game that provokes poignant thoughts about human existence and pushes players to find joy in small moments, and it's finally coming to PC, Switch and PS5 on July 31. Make sure to give it a go, whenever you have some time to kill. Two days after news of the Microsoft layoffs broke, Xbox Game Studios Publishing executive producer Matt Turnbull made a post on LinkedIn offering 'ways to use LLM Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.' His suggested prompts included, 'Draft a friendly message I can send to old coworkers letting them know I'm exploring new opportunities,' and, 'I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?' The tonedeaf post was met with appropriate ridicule and swiftly taken down. Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email , Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.
