Microsoft Corp announced on Friday that Bill Gates is leaving the company's board of directors. The co-founder and former chief executive is also stepping down from his Berkshire Hathaway board role.
Gates was previously Microsoft top boss until 2000 when he left the role to spend more time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2008, Gates left off his full-time job at Microsoft in an official capacity to concentrate on his philanthropy efforts.
According to a company statement, Gates wants to devote more time to addressing global health, sustainability, education and climate change. He will continue to serve as chief executive Satya Nadella's technology advisor. Nadella has said that working with Gates was "a great privilege."
In a LinkedIn post, Gates said he has made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on "which I serve - Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway - to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change."
"It was a great pleasure to have worked with Bill through the years. He created our business with a belief in the software's democratizing potential and a passion for solving the most pressing problems facing society today," Nadella said in a statement.
Through his foundation, Gates has been working with researchers to develop treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics for the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator aims to "identify potential treatments for COVID-19, accelerate their development, and prepare for the manufacture of millions of doses for use worldwide," according to the organization.
Gates ranks among the largest shareholders of Microsoft Corp. According to FactSet, he holds 1.4 percent of shares. The business became public in 1986, and is now one of the world's most valuable corporations with a market cap of $1.21 trillion.
Meanwhile, in another development, the U.S. Defense Department said it wants to reconsider its decision to give Microsoft Corp a $10 billion Cloud-computing deal over Amazon.com.
The filing comes after the Federal Claims Court indicated this week that there was an "under" in the bid assessment. The Pentagon is asking the court to return the case to the Defense Department for 120 days in order to "reconsider other elements of the challenged agency ruling.
Amazon, which was widely derided by President Trump along with its CEO Jeff Bezos, was considered the favorite to win the government contract, due to its cloud company with Amazon Web Services.
