20 Richest People Living In America

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1. Bill Gates

$81 BILLION SELF-MADE SCORE:SOURCE: MICROSOFT

AGE: 60

RESIDENCE: MEDINA, WASHINGTON

From his perch atop the world’s largest private charitable foundation, Gates keeps pushing to save lives in the developing world through efforts to eliminate polio, attack malaria and expand childhood vaccinations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also focussed on K–12 education in the US, although it admitted this year that it’s a “real struggle” to make changes to the system. In June, his team created a chicken coop in a Manhattan skyscraper to showcase the importance a few chickens can have for some of the world’s poorest people. “There is no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,” Gates said at the time. America’s richest person for 23 years running, he stepped down as Microsoft chairman in 2014 but remains a technology advisor and board member of the company he co-founded in 1975. Gates sells his Microsoft shares on a regular basis and now owns just 2.5 percent of the company, which accounts for 13 percent of his fortune. He also has investments in Canadian National Railway, tractor maker Deere & Co and car dealer AutoNation. In January, Gates increased his investment in Kymeta, a startup based in Redmond, Washington, that is building tiny antennas aimed at enabling satellite communication with any moving object.

2. Jeff Bezos

$67 BILLION SELF-MADE SCORE: SOURCE: AMAZON.COM

AGE: 52

RESIDENCE: SEATTLE