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Despite co-founding one of the most successful companies in the world, Bill Gates says he isn’t ready to stop working.
The Microsoft co-founder said he hopes to continue working like his friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, who still serves as chairman and chief executive of the firm he co-founded, Berkshire Hathaway, at the age of 94, in an interview with CNBC’s Make It.
“My friend Warren Buffett still comes into the office six days a week,” Gates said. “So, I hope my health allows me to be like Warren.”
Gates has quietly remained active at Microsoft after publicly distancing himself from the company. He told CNBC he is a “technology advisor” for the tech giant, and is focused on using his fortunes, worth $157 billion, according to Bloomberg, on funding research into global issues he cares about, including poverty and climate change.
Gates told CNBC his work with the nonprofit foundation he co-founded with his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, is a main reason he is not ready to retire. “We haven’t gotten rid of polio, we haven’t got rid of malaria,” he said. “I’m very, very committed to those things. We want to cut childhood deaths in half again, from 5 million to 2.5 million.”
If his health allows for it, Gates said he wants to keep “working at this level” for “at least 10 years.” But, added that he hopes “it’ll be more like 20 or 30.”
Gates stepped down as Microsoft chief executive in 2000, but remained at the company in various roles until leaving the board of directors in 2020 amid an investigation by the board into reports of inappropriate behavior by Gates with female employees, including an affair.
However, Microsoft executives told Business Insider that Gates has remained an advisor to current chief executive Satya Nadella over the company’s artificial intelligence strategy. He was also reportedly responsible for brokering the company’s partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and had been courting the company and its chief executive Sam Altman since 2016.