Through the years, owning shares of Microsoft has made many investors rich—and turned company executives into billionaires. But Microsoft’s richest individual shareholders aren’t necessarily who you might think. Although he’s vowed to give most of his fortune away, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and longtime CEO, still owns approximately $55 billion worth of MSFT shares as of October 2026. And the company’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, has an ownership stake valued around just around $489 million. But there’s another Microsoft leader who owns considerably more stock than either Gates or Nadella—that’s Steve Ballmer, who ran the company from 2000 to 2014.
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