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
Bill Gates program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with "a disproportionate number of interesting girls." He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success." At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In 1972, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in