Microsoft company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999. In 2018, Microsoft surpassed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world after being dethroned by the tech giant in 2010. Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business utilizing their shared skills in computer programming. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. While Gates enrolled at Harvard, Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University, though he later dropped out of school to work at Honeywell.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), previously branded as the 'William H. Gates Foundation', is a private foundation founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It was launched in 2000, and is said to be the largest private foundation in the United States, holding $50.7 billion in assets. The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and, in the US, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. The foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Other