The AI whisperer

How Gates continues to pull the strings at Microsoft

Since 2021, the founder has disappeared from the official perception of Microsoft. But in the background, Bill Gates - one of the top ten richest people with 127 billion US dollars - is still very active.

(Bild: AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS)

He handed over the position of CEO to Steve Ballmer in 2000 and remained with the US software giant Microsoft as Chairman of the Supervisory Board until 2014, later as an advisor. However, since allegations of questionable behavior with female colleagues were made in 2021, company founder Bill Gates has almost completely disappeared from public perception of Microsoft. But he is still much more active there than was previously known ...

In 2017, shortly before Microsoft was to enter into a promising alliance with a then unknown start-up called OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other executives received a memo with a major impact. In it, Bill Gates predicted that advances in AI algorithms would soon enable what he called "AI agents": "They won't just change how everyone interacts with computers. They're also going to turn the software industry on its head and bring about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to typing symbols." One recipient: "It was super futuristic." And Microsoft had had little positive experience with such assistants to date - cue Cortana.

Few believed in Gates' vision. But the 68-year-old billionaire and tech visionary turned out to be right - and contributed to Microsoft's success in the AI arms race with Google. How it came about.