Bryan Bedder / Getty Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Seventeen years ago, Bill Gates left his role at Microsoft, the company he founded, to focus on philanthropic efforts through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, providing billions of dollars in capital to noteworthy projects each year. With a net worth of $117 billion, according to Bloomberg (1), Gates’ portfolio is widely diversified. There’s his Microsoft stock, of course, but the ...