Latest news with #FrenchGates
New York Post
08-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Melinda French Gates refuses to fund daughter's startup despite $31 billion net worth
Melinda French Gates doesn't want to raise a nepo baby. 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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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 / 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. Advertisement '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.
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Melinda French Gates says some tech titans siding with Trump are doing ‘what some comms person' tells them instead of living by their values
Silicon Valley has seen a noticeable shift to the right, with several tech leaders engaging more closely with the current administration, a trend Melinda French Gates views critically, especially when it comes to leaders not living by their stated values. The shift in Silicon Valley in the lead-up to, and since, the presidential election has been marked. Billionaire tech titans have been in and out of the White House and Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago, with many lending their voices to the second Trump administration. But Melinda French Gates, a veteran of the tech scene since her early days working for Microsoft, is concerned by Silicon Valley's political shift to the right, particularly when powerful individuals aren't living by their values. French Gates's ex-husband, Bill Gates, sat down with the president after he won the Oval Office and spoke with Trump about his philanthropic efforts. Since then, Microsoft's cofounder has been unimpressed by some of the actions taken by the White House, namely through its Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While Musk was a major financial and political partner to the Trump 2.0 team, the ranks of those affiliating themselves with the current administration include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook, all of whom were given prime spots for the president's January inauguration. But a wider shift to the right among the tech community has also been observed by people like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who said dinner parties in Silicon Valley are now split across the political spectrum, where previously most leaned left. Andreessen, who was previously a self-described Democrat 'in good standing,' told a podcast earlier this year that there are now two types of dinner parties, one being 'the ones where every person there believes every single thing that was in the New York Times that day…and that is what they talk about at the dinner party. And I'm no longer invited to those, nor do I want to go to them.' French Gates, on the other hand, said now more than ever, people in power should be sticking to their values, having previously told Fortune she intends to set more of an agenda in the U.S. Speaking on the latest episode of Bloomberg's The Circuit podcast, the billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman said: 'What I have seen in the last six months to a year is, many people who used to say one thing have absolutely shifted over here,' she said—gesturing to the right. 'A democracy is made up by our beliefs and our investments and our values. We, of all times right now, should be living those values out, not pivoting to what some comms person tells us is the right thing to do. That would be ridiculous.' Like her former husband and cofounder at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, French Gates was critical of the supreme power awarded to Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a special government employee. While the relationship between Musk and Trump has now cooled off somewhat, French Gates—an advocate for women's and girls' rights—added that handing an entrepreneur with private business interests so much power was 'unprecedented' and 'made no sense' to her. Shifts toward a more right-wing mentality have also been observed across corporate America as DEI initiatives have been scaled back. Here, French Gates said, history will not be kind to the companies that undid some of their policies fostering diversity, equality, and inclusion. 'You have to look at society,' the philanthropist said. 'Who's in our society right now and does our democracy, do our state legislatures and does our Senate or our Congress look like society? The answer is no. 'The reason you need to have of all society representative in the legislature in any governing body is because they make good policy based on their lived experience.' Data supports French Gates's opinion. While the 119th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse group in history, it remains far less diverse than the American population as a whole. In January, Pew Research found 139 of today's senators and representatives identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, or Native American, continuing a trend of Congress becoming more diverse. However, this figure is still a long way off the social makeup of the voters the legislative body represents. Pew found that non-Hispanic white people make up a larger share of Congress (74%) than the overall population (58%), indeed the gap is about as wide as it was more than 40 years ago in 1981, when 94% of congressional lawmakers were white, compared with 80% of the U.S. population. This story was originally featured on
Business Insider
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
Melinda French Gates says Elon Musk should 'actually see what's going on in the world' before making decisions on US foreign aid
Melinda French Gates says Elon Musk should reconsider his approach to foreign aid cuts. French Gates was speaking to Fortune in an interview published Thursday when she was asked about Musk. Musk's cost-cutting outfit, the Department of Government Efficiency, has laid off thousands of foreign workers and shuttered foreign aid programs. "I would say, before you move on an action, go out and actually see what's going on in the world today," French Gates said of Musk. "Go travel. Then decide what you're going to do." "Yes, people in our own country are hurting. We need to do things about that. But people are really hurting around the world, and I don't think we want more poverty and more disease when we have a program that's working," French Gates added. Musk took aim at the US Agency for International Development, a humanitarian aid agency, shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January. USAID spent nearly $32.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, providing aid to countries such as Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia. "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead," Musk wrote in an X post on February 3, the same day USAID shut down its headquarters. Then, on February 4, USAID said nearly all its staff would be placed on administrative leave on February 7. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 83% of USAID's programs would be canceled, and the State Department would absorb the agency. French Gates has on several occasions voiced her disagreements with Musk, who previously criticized her for her philanthropy. In June, Musk said it " might be the downfall of Western civilization" after French Gates endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. Musk had been responding to an X post by the Babylon Bee staffer Ashley St. Clair about French Gates' endorsement. "Many super villain arcs being pursued under the guise of philanthropy," St. Clair wrote in a separate X post. "Yeah," Musk wrote in response. In an interview with The New York Times published in July, French Gates said she thought Musk's criticism of her political activism was " silly." She added that while Musk's comments did not upset her, she was puzzled at how tech CEOs like him liked to comment on topics they had no expertise in. "I mean, here's one thing that always has confounded me about society: I've just watched over the years tech leaders interviewed about their parenting style, a male who has spent, you know, 60 hours at his company that week, and I'm sure he's a fantastic C.E.O. and has done a great job — maybe or maybe not — in their company," French Gates said. "But then they get asked about parenting, and they spew all this stuff, and you think, something doesn't add up here. So I just — some of these comments to me are just kind of silly," she added. French Gates' charity work goes back decades. In 2000, she cofounded the Gates Foundation with her now ex-husband, Bill Gates. The couple had been married for 27 years when they got divorced in 2021. French Gates announced her departure from the Gates Foundation in May 2024. Her charity work is now mainly led by Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company she started in 2015. In an op-ed written for the Times in May 2024, French Gates said she would give $1 billion over the next two years to causes related to women and families worldwide, as well as for reproductive rights in the US. "Many years ago, I received this piece of advice: 'Set your own agenda, or someone else will set it for you.' I've carried those words with me ever since," she wrote. Last month, French Gates appeared on business professor and author Scott Galloway's podcast, where she was asked about the criticism she gets from tech bros regarding her philanthropy. French Gates told Galloway that she chooses to ignore those attacks and focus on her charity work. "I think when you're not doing the work and you're not in the arena, it's easier to criticize others and to project onto others or make them look bad because you don't want to go do that work," French Gates said. "That's up to them. If that's how they want to act? Fine, but it doesn't bother me. My work goes ahead," she added.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Melinda French Gates says the Gates Foundation's commitment to spend its entire $200 billion on global health by 2045 is ‘fantastic': ‘The vast majority of resources were to go back to society'
Good morning! Bumble makes new hires before a tough earnings, Penny Pritzker gets swept up in Harvard-Trump drama, and Fortune's Alexa Mikhail talks to Melinda French Gates about gigantic news from the Gates Foundation. - 20-year plan. For the last several months, I've been working alongside Fortune Senior Editor at Large Geoff Colvin on a feature package about the 25th anniversary of the Gates Foundation. We exclusively reported this morning that the foundation, which spent $100 billion in its first 25 years, will double its spending to $200 billion in the next 20 years to fight the world's deadliest diseases, reduce maternal and child deaths, and ease poverty. After which, the foundation will spend its last dollar and shut its doors in 2045—an unprecedented move in the world of philanthropy. To understand the sweeping implications of this decision, Colvin and I interviewed both Gateses, alongside over 30 researchers, grantees, and outside experts. I was also able to visit Gates-funded efforts in South Africa, bearing witness to programs on the ground in townships outside of Johannesburg and Cape Town that investigate the causes of five million children dying before their fifth birthday, deliver HIV prevention to young adults, and enroll participants in a Phase III trial with what could be the world's first new tuberculosis vaccine in 100 years. Melinda French Gates has played a pivotal role in global health since the turn of the century, when she cofounded and served as co-chair of the then-Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for over two decades before stepping down in 2024 following her divorce from Bill Gates. 'It's kind of unbelievable to think about the progress that has been made,' French Gates told me in her offices in Kirkland, Wash., in February, as she reflected upon the foundation's 25th anniversary. In her role, French Gates traveled across the world to learn about the needs of children and families. She has since championed getting vaccines to children in low and middle-income countries, spoken on the world stage about how family planning and contraceptives are the most important poverty reducers, and taken philanthropic advice from Warren Buffett, who contributed a large portion of his wealth to the foundation. Now, on the outside looking in, she told Fortune that she supports the foundation's massive $200 billion announcement. 'I think it's a fantastic decision,' she said, noting that the plan was always that the 'vast majority of those resources were to go back to society.' This commitment comes as reports find investments in Africa from the U.S. for gender-associated funds are struggling as a result of President Trump's rhetoric on DEI. As for her current work, French Gates is more eager than ever to 'set more of an agenda here in the United States.' Gates launched Pivotal Ventures in 2015 to focus on gender equality in the U.S., and is putting all of her resources into it. She recently published a memoir, where she discussed that work as well as her divorce. 'I have seen the rollbacks in this country, and I know that only 2% of philanthropy goes to organizations that work on gender,' she said. 'This is the time for me to step in…I can more easily and more flexibly use every tool in my toolbox.' Last year, French Gates made a $1 billion commitment to support organizations and individuals elevating gender equality and helping women step into their power. 'I don't know, there's something about turning 60. My mom says you get even more opinionated, maybe because you have less time,' she said, laughing. And what is she more opinionated about? 'I want this world to be better in the United States for my granddaughter than it is today. And right now, she has less rights than I had growing up, and that just shouldn't be,' she said. 'I am absolutely doing grant making internationally, but the majority will be in the United States.' What's more, French Gates has a message to the world's wealthiest about the necessity—and moral imperative—of giving back. 'If you're a billionaire in the United States, you benefited from this country. You benefited from good roads. You probably benefited somewhere along the way from the health sector,' she said. 'People in other places don't have those things, and so yes, we owe something back to society, and there are lots of ways to do it.' Read my full interview with Melinda French Gates here and read the full story on the future of the Gates Foundation here. Alexa The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune's daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today's edition was curated by Joey Abrams. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on
CBS News
08-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Melinda French Gates reflects on her work with foundation as Bill Gates announces 2045 closure
Melinda French Gates entered some of the most powerful circles while leading the foundation she co-founded with her ex-husband, Bill Gates, who announced on Thursday that it will close "permanently" at the end of 2045. French Gates, who studied computer science and worked at Microsoft, the company Gates created, exited the Gates Foundation last year to pursue philanthropy and investment through her own organization, Pivotal Ventures, which she started in 2015. The foundation changed its name from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation after her departure, which she previously described an "evolution" rather than a sudden move. French Gates offered written responses to The Associated Press' questions about the foundation's 25th anniversary and its decision to close in 20 years. She said the former couple had always intended to spend down their resources. "Ultimately, though," she wrote, "the timeline was Bill's decision to make with the board of trustees." Bill Gates says he will give away virtually all of his wealth over the next 20 years through the foundation, telling "CBS Mornings" that he hopes to live long enough to see some of the positive ways it has helped communities. The foundation has focused on tackling global challenges, including poverty, disease and inequity. The following responses from French Gates have been edited for length. Q: What do you hope the foundation's legacy will be? A: To me, the greatest measure of success would be if long after the foundation closed, someone, somewhere, was living a life that looked different because we existed. We talked a lot there about unlocking virtuous cycles. I like to think that right now, the foundation's work is contributing to a child getting a vaccine or a woman opening her first bank account — and that decades from now, their families and communities are going to continue to look different, because of what that child and that woman unlocked for the people around them. Q: What specific areas did you influence at the foundation? A: I was excited for us to launch the Giving Pledge because I believe that the most responsible thing to do with great wealth is give it away — and that you have an obligation to society to give it away as effectively as possible. I think it's important for people in that position to set norms around giving generously and to learn as much as possible from each other about how to be effective in their philanthropy. (As for gender), for too long, global health and development efforts treated women and girls as secondary — if they were considered at all. Data wasn't collected on their experiences. Their specific health needs were often ignored. There were so many questions that needed to be asked: What is the cost of all the unpaid labor women do at home? Will mobile banking make a difference if women don't have equal access to cellphones? Why are so many infectious diseases especially dangerous for women? We opened a gender equality division, but not just that — we made gender equality a priority across all of our work. And we put a lot of resources into expanding access to contraception, starting with a big commitment we made in 2012. Q: Why did you invest in opening more offices in other countries? A: When you're doing this kind of work, it doesn't take long to see that solutions that seem great on paper may not work in reality. We funded community toilets in India that people — especially women —wouldn't use because they were dangerous to go to at night. We funded vaccines in Vietnam that had to be kept cold, but came in packaging that didn't fit into the small refrigerators most people had there. We funded a simple pump to help East African farmers irrigate their land, but women — who account for half of all smallholder farmers — wouldn't buy it, because they didn't want to be seen swaying their hips in the way the pump required. There are many ways to learn about the cultural norms and logistical issues that determine whether a solution is feasible — and they all boil down to engaging people with local knowledge and lived experience, and trusting what they tell you. Q: Some foundation goals — like eradicating polio and controlling malaria — depend on the generosity of other countries and donors. How can you accomplish those goals given recent cuts to international aid? A: It's easy for people to forget — or maybe they didn't ever know — how hopeless the situation seemed around the year 2000, when malaria, tuberculosis and HIV were totally out of control. Since then, efforts funded, in large part, by development aid have saved more than 65 million lives from those diseases alone. No doubt the work has just gotten a lot harder, but we never thought it was going to be easy. And we still have the key ingredients of success. The pipeline of innovations has never been stronger. More lower-income countries are taking a leading role. As some donors announce cuts, others are stepping up. ____ The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce and in statehouses from Melinda French Gates' organization, Pivotal Ventures.
