Bill Gates reveals the mistake he regrets the most - and it's nothing to do with Microsoft

Billionaire Bill Gates says divorcing his wife Melinda was a mistake and that he regrets it years later.

Money can’t buy you happiness, the famous saying goes, and it seems it holds a lot of truth after Microsoft founder Gates revealed in an interview that his divorce was a mistake.

Melinda French and Gates divorced in 2021. They were married in 1994, having met in 1987 when Melinda began working at Microsoft.

In a statement in May 2021, they revealed that “after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage”. In 2024, Melinda also resigned from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which they set up together.

But, in a recent interview with The Times, Gates said of the divorce: “That was the mistake I most regret”.

“There is a certain wonderfulness to spending your entire adult life with one person because of the memories and depth of things you have done and having kids together,” Gates continued.

“When Melinda and I met, I was fairly successful but not ridiculously successful — that came during the time that we were together. So, she saw me through a lot. When we got divorced it was tough, then she made the decision to leave the foundation — I was disappointed that she took the option to go off.”

Among his various failures, Gates claimed the divorce was “at the top of the list”, adding, “The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years”.

It comes after Gates slammed Elon Musk's political influence and shameless promotion of far-right views using his own social media platform and other avenues as "insane s***".

Elsewhere, humans aren’t the only ones who can break up, with penguin “divorce” occurring at an alarming rate.

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