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Bill Gates India Tour 2024: 4 Key Highlights Gates said earlier on February 25 on his blog, "Gate Notes," that he would be traveling to an impoverished Odisha village where a government program is helping women acquire the skills required to complete government building contracts.

By Entrepreneur Staff • Mar 1, 2024

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Co-founder of Microsoft and philanthropist Bill Gates is presently in India, and his varied travels have generated a lot of attention and online conversation.The brilliant businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft, which transformed personal computing. His charity addresses world concerns ranging from education to health. Gates has had a significant impact on philanthropy and technology, which has shaped the modern world. He has previously frequently considered his travels to India as a chance to change the world and broaden his horizons. Gates said earlier on February 25 on his blog, "Gate Notes," that he would be traveling to an impoverished Odisha village where a government program is helping women acquire the skills required to complete government building contracts.

In a recent Instagram video, Gates celebrated India's artistic culture alongside Dolly Chaiwalla, a tea vendor from Nagpur. In the video, Mr. Gates is shown drinking a cup of chai he made and chatting with Dolly Chaiwalla, a well-known tea vendor and social media star. In the opening scene of the video, Mr. Gates orders "one chai" from Chaiwalla. Then, using a customized cart, Chaiwalla makes the tea in his own special way. Here are some more highlights of his trip.

1. Visit To IIT

During his visit with students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, on Thursday, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates answered a number of questions, including how AI will evolve over the next ten years and how it will affect society, technological advancements to improve the health sector in rural areas, and a quirky rapid fire round.More than a thousand students participated in the discussion in the Dogra Hall auditorium on campus. During his keynote address on "Innovation for Public Good", Gates said, "I am looking at India in a far broader way. I'm lucky enough, through the work of the foundation, to look at innovators who can help with all kinds of problems — starting with health, but also agriculture, gender and climate. We need fantastic Indian innovation."

2. Chat With Prime Minister Narendra Modi

On Thursday, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates had a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to talk about a variety of issues related to improving the world and empowering millions of people worldwide.

Using artificial intelligence for the public benefit, advancing digital public infrastructure (DPI), supporting women-led development, and accelerating innovation in vital industries like agriculture, health, and climate adaption were just a few of the important topics covered in the talks.

3. Bill Gates visits Microsoft IDC in Hyderabad

In honor of 25 years of ground-breaking research, the Bill Gates-envisioned Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) is celebrating. Philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Microsoft IDC, at the Microsoft India Development Center. (Photo courtesy of Microsoft). "It was rewarding to watch Bill address some of India's brightest engineering minds at IDC, our biggest asset. Echoing his optimism over the opportunity for an AI-powered India, IDC is excited to drive innovation from India for Microsoft – from AI and cloud to security and gaming," said Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Microsoft IDC, and CVP, Experiences + Devices India.

4. Travel In Odisha

On Tuesday evening, gates arrived in the capital of Odisha.Gates had multiple events planned for Wednesday, one of which is centered on the application of artificial intelligence for farmers. The co-founder of Microsoft is scheduled to see Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik during his tour, as well as attend events pertaining to the "Mukta" scheme, which provides localized employment prospects for the urban poor, the "Jaga Mission" plan for slum development, and "Mission Shakti," according to officials.

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Humans have spent thousands of years finding new ways to kill mosquitoes.

Ancient country, new ideas

I’m excited to see the latest breakthroughs during my visit this week.

I’ve been visiting India since the 1990s, and I’m on my way to visit again this week. Over the years, I’ve learned about its rich history and visited some of its stunning monuments, including the Taj Mahal.

But when I think about India’s most important contributions to the world, these are not the first things that come to mind. India’s greatest gift is its ability to innovate.

This country has a long history of important breakthroughs. (Mathematicians in ancient India are widely credited with introducing the decimal system for numbers.) More recently, India has made advances that are saving and improving millions of lives in India and around the world. The Gates Foundation has been a partner in some of these efforts, and I’m visiting this week to learn about how we can continue working with India to help its ideas and inventions reach everyone who needs them, no matter where they live. This will be a main topic when I meet with Prime Minister Modi this week.

Health is one area where India is making a big difference. This country is the world's largest producer of vaccines—it supplies more than 60 percent of all vaccines distributed by Gavi , the organization that has helped vaccinate more than 1 billion children in lower-income countries. Indian companies pioneered the creation of high-quality, low-cost vaccines and drugs, leading the world in making affordable treatments for diseases like HIV/AIDS as well as vaccines for rotavirus, pneumococcal pneumonia, and COVID. The government has helped deliver huge supplies of vaccines to its own people and to other low- and middle-income countries, and now it’s looking to do the same for medical devices and diagnostics.

Thanks in large part to India, developing countries now get new medicines and vaccines much faster than they used to. I rank these efforts as one of the most important health achievements ever. (We’ve made progress, but we’re not done. The world should still do more to shrink the gap between when a drug or vaccine becomes available in rich countries and when it reaches lower-income ones.)

Another area where I admire India’s innovative spirit is what’s known as digital public infrastructure, or DPI. In short, DPI refers to the digital platforms and tools that help deliver various services. India’s biometric identity program, Aadhaar, covers more than 1.4 billion people, allowing them to take advantage of all kinds of government services without needing a photo ID. UPI, a digital payment system that ensures that the person you’re doing business with is who they say they are, processes more than 12 billion transactions a month.

During my trip I’ll get to see India’s DPI in action. I’ll visit an agricultural monitoring center in the state of Odisha where government officials use DPI to give farmers real-time guidance. Thanks to Aadhaar, this center is able to maintain a registry of 7.5 million farmers—even if they don’t own land—and their crops, so officials can keep track of who is growing what (and, therefore, what kind of farming advice they need). It has also developed a chatbot that makes it easy for farmers to get the latest information about their crops, using AI to tailor content to their particular needs and in their local language.

This service’s pest-management program now reaches more than 4 million farmers, and since it began in 2018, the volume of crops that participating farmers lose to pests every year has dropped by 90 percent. Now others—including other states in India as well as Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and the World Bank—are looking to learn from Odisha’s experience with this service as well as its biometric ID and digital payments systems.

I'm also looking forward to learning more about how India is addressing urban poverty, especially among women. It has one of the fastest-growing urban populations in the world, and more than 100 million people there live in slums, where it’s hard and often impossible to get even basic services like health, education, and clean water. Women are particularly vulnerable because they face discrimination and violence.

This week, I’ll visit a low-income community in Odisha where a government program is helping women get the skills to fulfill government construction contracts. Since 2018, this program has helped 22,000 groups of women deliver on more than 52,000 projects including building roads, drains, and toilets.

This program could be a model for other countries that are facing similar challenges. The women who participate in it are partners in creating the projects: They get training in engineering, accounting, negotiating contracts, and other skills, and they’re involved in planning the project, making a budget, doing the construction, and doing maintenance on whatever they build. I'm looking forward to meeting a few women who are part of this program so I can hear about the challenges they face and the successes they’ve had.

India’s capacity to innovate will also become increasingly important to stopping climate change. Indians are already being affected by higher temperatures and less-predictable weather, and eliminating the greenhouse gases that are causing the problem is a huge scientific challenge. So it’s great that India is ramping up its ability to invent, manufacture, and deploy climate breakthroughs. The government is investing in research to raise the productivity of crops and livestock even in a warmer climate, and it’s expanding its plans for clean energy.

These are just a few of the ways in which India's innovations are changing the world. I could list many more, and I’m sure I’ll learn about a few new ones during my visit. I’m looking forward to speaking with government leaders, CEOs, and students who will drive innovation in India. This country has a lot to offer, and I'm optimistic that it will continue to lead the way in creating a more equitable world.

Lost crops like fonio could help us fight climate change and malnutrition.

We already know how to save millions of newborn lives.

Here are a few pictures from my latest visit to this amazing country.

This is my personal blog, where I share about the people I meet, the books I'm reading, and what I'm learning. I hope that you'll join the conversation.

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‘Can’t wait to go back again,’ says Bill Gates about his India visit; shares pictures

'during my travels last week in mumbai, delhi, and bangalore, i met some amazing people,' says the billionaire founder of microsoft.

• Updated Mar 08, 2023, 7:43 PM IST

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday posted a bunch of pictures from his recent visit to India on Instagram and expressed his desire to return soon. He wrote, "I can’t wait to go back again".

Gates wrote in the caption: “I just returned from my visit to India, and I can’t wait to go back again. I love visiting India because every trip is an incredible opportunity to learn. During my travels last week in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, I met some amazing people who taught me how they are using the power of innovation, science, and collaboration to find solutions to the world’s health, climate, and development challenges.”

        View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Bill Gates (@thisisbillgates)

On March 3, Bill Gates met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed education, healthcare, and climate change. “My conversation with the Prime Minister left me more optimistic than ever about the progress that India is making in health, development, and climate,” Gates said in a blog post.

Along the way, I met a teen bridge champion, had fun conversations with two of India’s most popular YouTubers, and I even drove an electric rickshaw, he wrote.

Bill Gates also lauded the advancement and progress that India has made over the recent years, including on health and climate. “India is showing what is possible when investment is made in innovation," Gates said.

"My trip to India started in Mumbai, where I visited an urban health center that offers primary health services and serves as a first point of contact for tuberculosis (TB) patients. India has the world’s highest TB burden. That’s why facilities like this and the health workers who run them are so critical for saving lives," he wrote.

"My first morning in Delhi I traveled to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute to learn about the advanced technologies being used to develop crops that are resistant to drought, flooding, and other extreme weather," he further wrote.

"During a meeting with Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development for India, we prepared and fed millet khichdi to pregnant mothers. I then participated in the Annaparashan ritual, a Hindu rite of passage that marks an infant's first intake of food other than milk," wrote Gates.

The co-founder of Microsoft also interacted with several well-known Indian personalities during his visit, including cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra, YouTuber Prajakta Koli, and Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri, Smriti Irani, and Ashwini Vaishnaw. In addition, he has also interacted with the founders of Zerodha , Nithin and Nikhil Kamath.

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Bill Gates went sight-seeing in Gujarat before throwing down with the world's richest people at the Ambani's pre-wedding party

• Bill Gates visited the Statue of Unity in India before heading to the Ambani pre-wedding bash.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally invited Gates to view the tallest statue in the world.
• The Ambani's three-day party featured tech CEOs like Gates and other celebrities.

Before rubbing elbows with the world's rich and famous at the Ambani pre-wedding bash , Bill Gates was just being a tourist in India.

Gates posted photos of him on Instagram Friday at the Statue of Unity , the world's largest statue, which is located in the Indian state of Gujarat. The towering memorial to politician Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — who helped reunite India post-British colonial rule — is nearly 600 feet tall and was commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2013.

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While Gates appears to be participating in regular old tourist activities, the former Microsoft CEO was personally invited by Modi himself to view the statue.

"Thank you @narendramodi for the invitation to visit the impressive Statue of Unity. It is an engineering marvel and a great tribute to Sardar Patel," Gates wrote on Instagram under a photo of him grinning in front of the steel and bronze colossus. "Also great to see it is creating economic opportunity for local tribal communities, especially women."

Gates was so inspired by the visit that he posted a follow-up video of his experience at the Statue of Unity set to "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen .

Before Gates also sat down with Modi to discuss "using AI for public good," he wrote in the caption an Instagram post that featured him posing with the Prime Minister . Gates also later met with multiple local leaders, per posts on his social media.

What Gates has been making headlines for, however, is his attendance at one of the biggest parties of the year so far — the Ambani family pre-wedding bash hosted by Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani . The soiree celebrating his son Anant Ambani's upcoming marriage featured a private performance by Rihanna and some of the most prominent names in business and Bollywood.

Watch: Crowd boos Elon Musk at Dave Chappelle's comedy show

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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates looks back at his earlier trip ahead of his upcoming visit to India

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Bill gates visits bhubaneswar slum. what did the billionaire ask residents.

Bill Gates visited a slum in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, engaging with residents and discussing the impact of government welfare initiatives. He acknowledged India's contribution to global health, particularly in vaccination and the supply of vaccines to developing nations.

Bill Gates on Odisha trip

India making a big difference in health: bill gates, read more news on.

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Bill Gates starts four-day visit to India

Microsoft's bill gates arrived in delhi at the start of his third visit to india. he is due to meet a range of people including politicians..

Bill Gates, the head of US computer software giant Microsoft, arrived here Monday at the start of a four-day visit during which he is due to meet the doyens of India's booming IT industry, AIDS activists and political leaders.

His visit is the third to the country, which usually accords him a reception equal to those given to heads of states.

He was to meet Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President A.P.J Abdul Kalam, who is a technologist and the architect of India's missile programme.

Gates will devote a large part of his visit to a health care programme being supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is addressing children's vaccination and AIDS prevention.

The foundation, along with the World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation, is supporting the development of an India-specific anti-AIDS vaccine.

Industry officials said Gates is likely to make new announcements relating to investments in the Indian arm of Microsoft, although company officials have not stated that this is on the cards.

Gates will be also visiting India's information technology capital Bangalore, a Microsoft development centre in Hyderabad and address businessmen in the country's commercial hub Bombay.

Microsoft has had a presence in India since 1987, with offices in five Indian cities including Bangalore.

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Bill Gates visits Bengaluru during his India tour

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire, visited an urban neighbourhood in Bengaluru during a recent trip to India and praised the banking company’s digitalization for its ability to reach the underprivileged.

Bengaluru: Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire, visited an urban neighbourhood in Bengaluru during a recent trip to India and praised the banking company's digitalization for its ability to reach the underprivileged. In New Delhi, he also spoke with Prime Minister Narendra Modi about issues like climate change, healthcare, and education. During a recent trip to India, Gates remarked in one of his social media posts, "In Bangalore, I visited the urban community of Halasuru to learn about how digital banking can help reach poor and underserved communities. It was interesting to see how postal workers are now bringing banking services directly to doorsteps through @IPPBOnline." In Mumbai, Bill Gates also met YouTuber Shraddha, better known as Aiyyo Shraddha, who is based in Bengaluru. "@AiyyoShraddha, a very funny comedian, joined me for the tour of the urban health center. She and I had a wonderful talk afterwards about India's goal of reducing TB and how Mumbai has been a leader in trying new approaches," he tweeted.

He added that his visit to India had given him genuine inspiration and given him hope for the future of the world.

"As you can see, I had a very busy week. But my travels left me truly inspired and optimistic about the future. As big as the problems facing the world are right now, my visit to India reminded me that our capacity to solve them is even bigger," he wrote.

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Bill Gates shares glimpses from his recent India visit: 'Can’t wait to go back'. Watch

M icrosoft founder Bill Gates, who was recently in India, shared notes from his visit to the country and admitted that he was left so impressed by the development he had seen that he could not wait to return again.

"Last week, I got my wish and returned to India—and now that I’m home, I can’t wait to go back for another visit," Gates wrote on his blog on Wednesday.

The 68-year-old spoke about his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and revealed that they conversed about how the Gates Foundation had played an instrumental role in supporting some of the country's goals.

"I had the privilege of spending an hour with Prime Minister Modi and some of his cabinet ministers. We had a great conversation about how the Gates Foundation can continue to support India’s goals on digital technology, women-led development, and innovation in agriculture, health, and climate change," he wrote.

Gates further wrote about his trips to Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar where he met Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, in both those cities. He also recalled his meet up with Dolly Chaiwala in the former.

"My trip got off to a great start on Tuesday in Hyderabad, where social media star Dolly Chaiwala made me a delicious cup of chai. It was the perfect cure for jet lag. In Hyderabad I also met with Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, whom I’ve known for years, and other experts who got me up to speed on the latest in digital public infrastructure, or DPI."

"I got to see India’s DPI in action when I toured an agricultural monitoring center in Bhubaneswar. At this facility, government agriculture experts send advice and real-time updates to 6.5 million farmers via phone."

Gates also wrote about visiting the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and concluding his trip by attending the pre-wedding festvities for Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant in Jamnagar.

"I love talking with college students, and my visit to the New Delhi campus of the Indian Institutes of Technology was no exception. The students and faculty were brimming with ideas and optimism about the innovations that will help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges."

"My trip was scheduled around the pre-wedding celebration of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant. Here I am with Paula Hurd and Nandan and Rohini Nilekani," he concluded.

Gates also shared a video of his trip to India on his YouTube channel.

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Exclusive: Bill Gates, ousted for misconduct, is still pulling the strings at Microsoft

In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company's top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called "AI agents" — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.

"Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers," Gates wrote. "They're also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons."

At the time, the memo struck those who read it as far-fetched. "It seemed super futuristic," a Microsoft executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. Microsoft had been widely mocked for its previous attempts at creating personal "agents," from its failed Office assistant Clippy to its racist chatbot, Tay. Few at the time would have believed a new generation of these agents would transform Microsoft.

Today, though, it's clear that Gates' secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial-intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world's most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI's GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. "Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote," the executive said.

That's not by accident.

Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft's AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company's operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft's crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI. In early 2023, when Microsoft debuted a version of its search engine Bing turbocharged by the same technology as ChatGPT, throwing down the gauntlet against competitors like Google, Gates, executives said, was pivotal in setting the plan in motion. While Nadella might be the public face of the company's AI success — the Oz who built the yellow-brick road to a $3 trillion juggernaut — Gates has been the man behind the curtain.

"What you read is not what's happening in reality," another Microsoft executive said. "Satya and the entire senior leadership team lean on Gates very significantly. His opinion is sought every time we make a major change."

When Nadella took over the reins from Steve Ballmer a decade ago, Microsoft was seen as a dinosaur of the computer age it had helped pioneer. Peter Thiel bashed the company as "a bet against technological innovation." So Nadella, who had worked at Microsoft since 1992, turned to his former boss for help. On the day Nadella became CEO, he asked Gates to spend 30% of his time as a technical advisor, in part to help motivate his staff. "When I say, 'Hey, I want you to go run this by Bill,' I know they're going to do their best job prepping for it," he told Wired at the time.

In 2020, when Gates stepped down as chair of Microsoft's board, Nadella showered him with praise. The company, Nadella promised, would "continue to benefit from Bill's ongoing technical passion and advice to drive our products and services forward."

But a year later, Nadella's embrace of Gates appeared to change — at least publicly. In 2021, as Gates and his wife, Melinda, were divorcing, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates had been forced to step down as the company investigated him for having an affair with an employee. As news of Gates' misconduct went viral, the squeaky-clean reputation he and his public-relations team had meticulously crafted over the years unraveled . Several female employees came forward with stories of Gates asking them out, and his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, including a flight on Epstein's private jet, came under renewed scrutiny. Suddenly, Nadella's mentor had become his greatest liability, and he and Microsoft quickly distanced themselves from Gates.

"The Microsoft of 2021 is very different from the Microsoft of 2000," Nadella said at the time. "The power dynamic in the workplace is not something that can be abused in any form." The company's greatest responsibility, he later added, is "cultivating a culture where everyone is empowered to do meaningful work."

But among the people whom Nadella secretly empowered to do meaningful work, BI has learned, was Gates himself. Rather than banishing him from the company, Nadella continued to draw on his advice and expertise — making Gates a key player in Microsoft's efforts to vie for dominance in AI.

The common lore about Microsoft's marriage with OpenAI is that it was brokered by Kevin Scott, the company's chief technology officer. Scott had known Altman for years, and in summer 2018, he arranged a meeting between Altman and Nadella. Later that year, the three men hammered out an initial deal, and the rest is history.

According to two executives, Gates' memo treated as gospel, sparking Microsoft's push to take the lead in the AI arms race.

But lost in that origin story is that Gates had been regularly meeting with OpenAI since 2016. Ever since he published "The Road Ahead" in 1995, Gates had been dreaming of a world in which everyone would navigate the internet using software that would "have a personality you'll be able to talk to in one form or another" and that would "learn about your requirements and preferences in much the way that a human assistant does." Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft had launched several primitive and widely ridiculed versions of agents — from Rover, a cartoon dog that guided you through Windows 95, to Clippy, the most hated paperclip of all time. Now, it seemed, OpenAI might offer Microsoft a way to help forge the AI future that Gates had long envisioned. After the two companies formed their partnership, OpenAI's leaders conducted regular presentations for Gates at his 66,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, keeping him apprised of critical benchmarks and significant obstacles.

It was Gates, in fact, who played a pivotal role in turning OpenAI and Microsoft into a power couple. In mid-2022 — two years after he was ousted from the board — he privately challenged Altman and OpenAI to create a model capable of passing an Advanced Placement biology exam. Gates didn't think it could be done. Altman and OpenAI debuted GPT-4 for the first time outside the company at Gates' house in August 2022 during a dinner; Nadella was among the guests. When it aced the test, Gates was shocked, calling it "the most stunning demo I've ever seen in my life."

The demo prompted Gates to write another memo — what one former executive referred to as " the memo" — spelling out how Microsoft should use GPT-4. Gates stressed that the large language model, trained on the entirety of the public internet, could finally usher in the era of personal agents. "Think of it as a digital personal assistant," he wrote in a version of that memo later posted on his blog. "It will see your latest emails, know about the meetings you attend, read what you read, and read the things you don't want to bother with."

Last fall, Nadella and Microsoft scrambled to quell the chaos when OpenAI's board abruptly fired Altman. Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson, told BI that if Gates was speaking with Altman, it was not on behalf of the company. "Bill is not at Microsoft and not involved here," Shaw told BI at the time.

During the five-day fracas that followed, Gates — with his own recent experience with an ouster — reached out to Altman to offer support as he negotiated a return to the leadership of OpenAI.

Today, insiders say Gates' sway at Microsoft extends far beyond OpenAI.

Executives from across the company — including its business-applications boss, Charles Lamanna; its chief scientist, Jaime Teevan; its Teams chat-app boss, Jeff Teper; and its head of cybersecurity, Charlie Bell — meet regularly with Gates to review products. He's also personally involved in recruiting and retaining important executives for Microsoft. "Gates is very involved with product reviews and one-on-ones with executives," a former executive said. Last year, Gates told Forbes he spent about 10% of his time in Redmond, Washington, advising Microsoft on product road maps.

Gates over years has also pushed Microsoft to be more consumer-focused, despite many consumer technology failures. In March, many observers were shocked when the company announced it was hiring Mustafa Suleyman, who cofounded DeepMind and spent many years at Google, to lead a new consumer-AI organization. "Bill G. thinks the major opportunity is consumers," one insider said. "If you look at the new consumer-AI organization, that looks like Bill's influence on Satya." Shaw said Gates was not involved in hiring Suleyman.

All this is a far cry from the perception that Gates has been kept at a distance ever since he was ousted from the board. Gates, who has continued to keep a low profile, has emerged from the scandal largely unscathed; today, the allegations of his misconduct aren't even mentioned in his Wikipedia entry. The Microsoft of 2024, it appears, is not as different from the Microsoft of 2021 as Nadella would have everyone believe. Gates is not gone, but his checkered past has been largely forgotten.

Shaw said there hadn't been any substantial changes in Gates' role as a technical advisor since he left the board in 2020. The "insistence on portraying the role of Bill Gates as 'pulling strings' at Microsoft," he told BI, "is fundamentally inaccurate and at odds with reality." Gates declined an interview request and his representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Near the end of "The Road Ahead," Gates got existential. "It's a little scary that as computer technology has moved ahead, there's never been a leader from one era who was also a leader in the next," he lamented at the ripe age of 39. "So from a historical perspective, I guess Microsoft is disqualified from leading in the highway era of the Information Age."

Then the middle-aged Gates revealed his true ambition: "I want to defy historical tradition."

Now approaching 70, Gates is still defying history — this time from behind the scenes. And if the revived fortunes of Microsoft are any indication, he appears to be winning.

April 30, 2024: This story has been updated with an additional comment from Microsoft.

Ashley Stewart is a chief technology correspondent at Business Insider. She reports on enterprise technology companies including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services from Seattle.

Are you a Microsoft employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Ashley Stewart via email ( [email protected] ), or send a secure message from a nonwork device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242).

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The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft announce five-year strategic partnership to accelerate cloud and generative AI initiatives

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Editor’s note – April 23, 2024 – The quotation from Judson Althoff was updated following initial publication.

ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wash . — April 23, 2024 — Microsoft Corp. and The Coca-Cola Company on Tuesday announced a five-year strategic partnership to align Coca-Cola’s core technology strategy systemwide; enable the adoption of leading-edge technology; and foster innovation and productivity globally.

As part of the partnership, Coca-Cola has made a $1.1 billion commitment to the Microsoft Cloud and its generative AI capabilities. The collaboration underscores Coca-Cola’s ongoing technology transformation, underpinned by the Microsoft Cloud as Coca-Cola’s globally preferred and strategic cloud and AI platform.

Through the partnership, the companies will jointly experiment with groundbreaking new technology like Azure OpenAI Service to develop innovative generative AI use cases across various business functions. This includes testing how Copilot for Microsoft 365 could help improve workplace productivity.

“Through our long-term partnership, we have made significant progress to accelerate system-wide AI Transformation across The Coca-Cola Company and its network of independent bottlers worldwide,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “We are proud to support Coca-Cola as it continues to embrace the era of AI and looks to solutions like Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot for Microsoft 365 to drive innovation across every area of its business.”

Coca-Cola has migrated all its applications to Microsoft Azure, with most major independent bottling partners following suit. As a pioneer in AI adoption, Coca-Cola has been innovating with generative AI for nearly a year and has already leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to reimagine everything from marketing to manufacturing and supply chain and beyond. The company is currently exploring the use of generative AI-powered digital assistants on Azure OpenAI Service to help employees improve customer experiences, streamline operations, foster innovation, gain a competitive advantage, boost efficiency and uncover new growth opportunities.

“This new agreement builds on the success of Coca-Cola’s partnership strategy with Microsoft, showing our commitment to ongoing digital transformation,” said John Murphy, president and chief financial officer of The Coca-Cola Company. “Our partnership with Microsoft has grown exponentially, from the $250 million agreement we initially announced in 2020 to $1.1 billion today.”

The agreement reflects a significant step in advancing Coca-Cola’s digital transformation, focused on providing expanded access to Microsoft’s cloud and AI platforms — as well as solutions such as Microsoft 365, Power BI, Dynamics 365, Defender and Fabric — to enhance efficiency and scalability while fostering innovation across the system.

“Our expanded partnership with Microsoft is an important next chapter in Coca-Cola’s journey toward a digital-first enterprise powered by emerging technologies,” said Neeraj Tolmare, senior vice president and global chief information officer for The Coca-Cola Company. “Microsoft’s capabilities help accelerate our adoption of AI to create incremental enterprise value.”

About The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is a total beverage company with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories. Our company’s purpose is to refresh the world and make a difference. We sell multiple billion-dollar brands across several beverage categories worldwide. Our portfolio of sparkling soft drink brands includes Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta. Our water, sports, coffee and tea brands include Dasani, Smartwater, Vitaminwater, Topo Chico, BODYARMOR, Powerade, Costa, Georgia, Gold Peak and Ayataka. Our juice, value-added dairy and plant-based beverage brands include Minute Maid, Simply, innocent, Del Valle, fairlife and AdeS. We’re constantly transforming our portfolio, from reducing sugar in our drinks to bringing innovative new products to market. We seek to positively impact people’s lives, communities and the planet through water replenishment, packaging recycling, sustainable sourcing practices and carbon emissions reductions across our value chain. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people, helping bring economic opportunity to local communities worldwide. Learn more at  www.coca-colacompany.com  and follow us on Instagram , Facebook and LinkedIn .

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]

The Coca-Cola Company, Scott Leith, [email protected]

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit Microsoft Source at  http://news.microsoft.com/source . Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at  https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts .

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