Bill Gates was like a ‘kid in a candy store’ with young pretty Microsoft interns, so much so that they were banned from being alone with him, an upcoming book claims.
Intimate details of the billionaire’s relationships with women are set to be exposed by New York Times journalist Anupreeta Das, who writes that Gates’ infidelity left his wife Melinda ‘seething for a long time.’
Bill’s calendar would allegedly include blocks of time which were for unexplained reasons, and his security staff were once overhauled by Melinda because she felt they were ‘enabling’ him.
In upcoming book ‘Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World’, it is claimed that the Gates’ marriage finally hit breaking point in 2019 when his connection to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein came to light.
An upcoming book has opened the lid on billionaire Bill Gates’ relationships with women, including the alleged reasons for his divorce from wife Melinda, pictured together in 2018
Gates’ ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad allegedly hoped to seduce the magnate into marriage, but on a romantic getaway he was reportedly more interested in reading biographies
The look inside Gates’ private life began with how he blew his chance of marrying a tech entrepreneur before he married Melinda by spending a romantic weekend at her cottage reading a biography of Henry Ford.
The book claims that the Microsoft founder bungled his chances with Ann Winblad, an early female tech entrepreneur, even though she tried to court him.
Winblad was ‘hoping to plant the marriage seed’ in Gates’ mind so invited him to her holiday home in North Carolina’s Outer Banks with two friends and their two-year-old daughter.
But Gates spent the entire weekend reading the biography of Henry Ford and only took breaks to ride a gun buggy, according to Das’ book.
Despite this, Gates persuaded his wife Melinda French Gates to let him visit Winblad alone for one weekend a year at that same cottage.
The bizarre arrangement was one of many occasions when Gates had questionable or inappropriate contact with women, writes Das.
According to the book, Melinda Gates became motivated to divorce her husband after his relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was exposed
She says that Bill cheated on Melinda many times and was ‘like a kid in a candy store’ with young women at Microsoft, so much so that young interns were banned from being alone with him.
After Bill’s connections to Epstein came to light in 2019 – which he claims were purely for philanthropic reasons – Melinda reportedly began consulting lawyers about splitting up their $150 billion.
She formally filed for divorce in 2021 and called her marriage of 27 years and three children ‘irretrievably broken’.
The document revealed that the Gates’ did not sign a prenup but did sign a separation agreement covering the distribution of their assets which left Melinda with more than $6 billion.
Melinda and Bill met at Microsoft in 1987 when she was a product manager and Bill was technically her boss.
It wasn’t until 1993 that they got engaged, followed by a marriage ceremony in Hawaii the following year.
But before then, Winblad was a potential Mrs. Gates who wanted to ‘settle down and start a family’, according to the book.
They met in 1984 and dated for three years and Winblad was seen as Bills’ mental equal with conversations about bioengineering and physics while they were on vacation together.
Following his divorce, Gates began a relationship with philanthropist Paula Hurd, the widow of former Oracle CEO Mark Hurd
Long before broadband internet, they would watch movies together while in different places by synching up their viewing then calling on the phone about it afterwards.
Winblad, an early investor in Microsoft and one of Silicon Valley’s first female tech entrepreneurs, hoped it would lead to a lifelong partnership.
Das writes: ‘Hoping to plant the marriage seed in Gates’ mind and introduce him to the joys of family life, she invited Mitch Kapor, the Lotus founder, his then wife and their two-year-old baby for a visit to her cottage to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.
‘Gates spent the entire weekend immersed in a biography of Henry Ford, although he did take a break or two – to ride a dune buggy’.
Winblad and Bill did remain so close however that he continued spending one weekend with her – alone – each year, an arrangement which continued after his wedding.
He sought Melinda’s blessing which she appears to have given, one early concession towards Bill’s relations with women which Das writes would leave her steadily more unhappy over the years.
Das claimed that by the time Melinda filed for divorce, she had been ‘seething for a long time’ about the unequal nature of their marriage.
She had been ‘seething’ about his numerous infidelities too and upset about how she wasn’t treated with respect at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable enterprise that bears both their names
Melinda Gates met Bill in 1987 while she was a young worker at Microsoft, where he was technically her boss
According to the upcoming book, Bill was allowed to spend one weekend a year at his ex-girlfriend’s home, as their marriage was described in ‘contractual’ terms
During meetings Bill could cut Melinda off, leaving her ‘quietly fuming’. When Melinda tried to stop Bill from droning on during meetings, he found it ‘difficult to take her advice’, leading to tense moments that were awkward for everyone in the room.
People who worked with Bill in the early days of Microsoft said it was ‘well understood’ that he had ‘not factored children into his life’.
Bill was ‘consumed’ by Microsoft and some of his peers ‘wondered what kind of husband and father he would make’.
Coworkers were ‘tired of his monomaniacal focus on work, joked that married life would slow him down’, Das writes.
Bill’s early days at Microsoft were marked by parties at strip clubs after work – the all male teams that he worked on were oblivious to how bad it seemed.
Das writes that before his marriage, Bill was often ‘besieged’ by women who wanted to date him and staff at Microsoft who hoped to catch his eye by wearing ‘Marry Me Bill’ t-shirts.
A former senior Microsoft employee said he was like a ‘kid in a candy store’ at the office.
Das writes: ‘Well into his marriage it was not unusual for Gates to flirt with women and pursue them, making unwanted advances such as asking a Microsoft employee out to dinner while he was still the company’s chairman….
‘…Gates flirted with some of the interns at the Gates Foundation, putting them in the uncomfortable position of having to think about their career prospects while not wanting to be hit on by the boss.
‘In one instance a colleague chastised one person for sending a 22-year-old intern to Gates’ office by herself, saying: ‘She’s too young and too pretty’.
Gates’ approaches to women were ‘clumsy rather than predatory’ according to people who saw them firsthand.
He did not ‘prey on’ women and ask them for sex in exchange for prompting their new career, but instead was ‘charming, respectful and just fun’, according to a former Microsoft executive.
‘He’s not Harvey Weinstein…. I know of no real situation in which anyone got anything for sleeping with Bill’, the executive said.
Following her relationship with Gates, Ann Winblad went on to found the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Instead Bill displayed a ‘certain naivete in his interactions with women, mistaking engaged conversation for mutual interest’.
But Melinda became increasingly unhappy about putting up with it.
According to Das, Bill’s ‘calendar would include blocks of time that were ostensibly personal meetings into which few people had visibility’.
She writes: ‘More than a decade ago, there was a sweep of Gates’s personal security team because they were ‘enabling him to be places where (Melinda) didn’t know he was at’.
Such was Melinda’s paranoia about Bill’s affairs that she ordered their housekeepers not to give out his direct number when other women called the house.
This led to an awkward moment when a female acquaintance of Bill’s called and asked to speak to him – the housekeeper eventually told her the reason she couldn’t give it out.
Das says that the Gates’ went through marital counseling in the early to mid 2000s after the birth of their youngest child, Phoebe, led them to go through an ‘especially rough patch’
But Gates ‘assumed his behavior would have no consequences’ and did not appear to have changed his ways.
According to Das, the end of their marriage was due to ‘different notions about the meaning of a marital contract’.
Melinda felt that she ‘genuinely believed being married would make a difference because of her deep belief in its sanctity’.
Bills friends however said that, as Bill saw it, ‘love and marriage can often mean two different things’
Das writes: ‘One former associate of Gates pointed out the difference between marrying someone and committing to exclusivity in that marriage, comparing it to an arrangement (Warren) Buffet had with his first wife, Susan Buffett, who left him but arranged for a companion for her husband’.
Buffett remained married until Susan’s death in 2004.
When the Gates’ marriage hit rough patches, a former associate reportedly pointed to the marriage of Warren Buffet, whose wife left him but arranged a companion for her husband
Das writes: ‘It was hardly a sparkless or joyless marriage (for Gates). There were plenty of moments of mirth and affection… that he was unfaithful to her multiple times over the years’.
The book says that while Bill did love Melinda, he ‘didn’t think he would ever lose her.’
One source said that the divorce had been ‘coming a long time’, adding that ‘Melinda does nothing that isn’t intentional’.
Among the other previous allegations against Bill is one from a female Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter to the company’s board that she had a sexual relationship over years with him that began in 2000.
The Microsoft board hired an outside law firm to investigate and eventually Bill stepped down from the board of directors.
Speaking to CBS after the divorce, Melinda said that she made it ‘very clear’ to her former husband that he should part ways with Epstein after she met him in 2013.
He ignored her and it became an intolerable stress when Epstein was arrested in 2019, putting intense focus on his connections to wealthy and powerful men, including Bill.
Melinda said: ‘I wanted to see who this man was and I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door.
‘He was abhorrent, he was evil personified, I had nightmares about it afterwards. My heart breaks for these young women because that’s how I felt and I’m an older woman. My god I feel terrible for those women, it’s awful. He was awful’.
In response to the allegations in the book, Gates’ representatives told DailyMail.com in a statement that the book relies ‘almost exclusively on second- and third-hand hearsay and anonymous sources.’
‘The book includes highly sensationalized allegations and outright falsehoods that ignore the actual documented facts our office provided to the author on numerous occasions,’ the statement read.
‘Mr. Gates has previously stated his deep regret for ever meeting with Epstein, who he met with for discussions regarding philanthropy only.’
