Bill and Melinda Gates are ending their marriage

Bill and Melinda Gates have announced the end of their 27-year marriage in a statement posted to their verified Twitter accounts.

"We have made the decision to end our marriage after much thought and hard work on our relationship," the statement reads.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, their philanthropic organization, was founded by the couple in 2000. According to the foundation's website, it has spent $53.8 billion on a variety of programs relating to global health, poverty alleviation, and other topics since its inception.

The statement reads, "We have raised three amazing children and created a foundation that works all over the world to allow all people to live safe, prosperous lives." "We really believe in the project and will continue to work together at the base, but we don't believe we will develop as a couple in this next stage of our lives."

Melinda Gates filed a divorce petition in King County, Washington, on Monday, requesting that the marriage be dissolved based on the couple's separation agreement. The records that were made public did not contain any financial information.

Bill Gates is one of the world's wealthiest individuals. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth was $137 billion in February.

Bill Gates, 65, and Melinda Gates, 56, met at Microsoft, which Bill Gates had created and was running as CEO at the time. She began her career as a product manager, the only woman in the company's first class of MBA graduates, and rose through the ranks to become the general manager of knowledge products.

They met at a business dinner in New York shortly after she joined the organization in 1987.

In her book "The Moment of Lift," she described the experience as follows: "When I arrived late, all of the tables had been filled except for one, which had two empty chairs side by side. 

One of them had a seat for me. Bill arrived a few minutes later and took the other seat."

In 1994, the pair married in Hawaii.

The Gates have been active in the battle against Covid-19 and the campaign to create drugs and vaccines and equitably spread them around the world through their foundation for the past year. The group had contributed a total of $1.75 billion to the global pandemic response as of December.

Bill Gates resigned from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway in March 2020 to "dedicate more time to his philanthropic interests," including climate change work.

Melinda Gates is also the founder of Pivotal Ventures, an investment company that announced the couple's split.

"As we continue to navigate this new life, we ask for room and privacy for our families," the couple said in a statement released Monday.

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