The radical ways tech’s most famous ex-wives and widows are spending their billions

LEAVE A COMMENT As Jeff Bezos flies to space and Bill Gates warns about the dangers of AI, their former spouses aren't just tech's most famous ex-wives, they're women who helped build — and are now redistributing — some of the largest tech fortunes in history.

Amazon co-founder MacKenzie Scott, who divorced Bezos after 25 years of marriage in 2019, became the world's top donor in 2025 after donating a record $7.2 billion across 186 organizations.

She, along with Melinda French Gates and Apple founder Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs, are leading the way by revolutionizing giving, focusing on helping others in our increasingly tech-driven world.

Meet the philanthropic powerhouses who are changing how we think about giving, and setting a high bar as they donate billions.

Melinda French Gates, who has a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Computer Science and Economics, as well as an MBA from Duke University, split from Microsoft founder Bill Gates — who she met while she was a project manager for the tech company — in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.

Three years later, she announced another breakup — her resignation as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Instead she focused on her own company, Pivotal Ventures, founded in 2015, which aims to empower women, girls and young people.

She revealed her plan to dedicate $1 billion to advance women worldwide in 2024. "Decades of research on economics, wellbeing, and governance make it clear that investing in women and girls benefits everyone," she said at the time.

"Philanthropy to me means using your voice, your time, your skills, or your money, your resources, to change the world for the better"

Most recently, the 62-year-old has spoken of her new focus on women in midlife and menopause. "I've gone through menopause, and many of my friends have, too, and I don't think any of us had all the tools and knowledge we needed — even those of us with access to high-quality medical care," she told The Skimm. "A lot of what I learned about menopause came not from doctors but from my friends. I'm determined it will be different for the next generation of women."

While the focus of her philanthropy continuously evolves, the meaning of giving remains the same. "Philanthropy to me means using your voice, your time, your skills, or your money, your resources, to change the world for the better," she told Wired's The Big Interview podcast. "My definition of that really has not changed over the years."

Meanwhile, she has openly critiqued other billionaires who aren't generous with their wealth. "I think the expectation in our country that wealth should not be amassed in great amounts in one individual's hands, I think that idea is still out there, and I think that's why you're seeing such pushback on some of these people who are amassing enormous amounts of wealth, right?"

"They benefited from living in this country, being educated here, having our regulatory environment, having our venture capital system. If you live in this country and started a business, you benefited from this country, and I believe to whom much is given, much is expected, and they should be giving back more. Far more than they are."

MacKenzie Scott, who holds a B.A. in English from Princeton University, has been driving impact through her organization Yield Giving. She was allocated 4% of Amazon stock when she and Jeff Bezos divorced in 2019, the same year she signed the Giving Pledge, committing to give away at least half of her wealth during her lifetime.

Worth $36.3 billion according to Bloomberg, she has given away $26 billion since 2020, including over $1 billion marked for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

"I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful… And I will keep at it until the safe is empty"

The billionaire shared her outlook on giving when she joined The Giving Pledge, a nonprofit founded by the Gateses and Warren Buffett. "We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand," she wrote. "In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won't wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty."

Her Yield Giving strategy steps away from traditional top-down philanthropic models in favor of trust-based grants with zero strings attached. That way, charities and organizations on the ground can deploy the funds how they see fit.

Fellow philanthropist French Gates praised Scott's efforts. “We have the old adage, actions speak louder than words,” she told Fortune. "I look back at the giving MacKenzie has done in the last year. Look at what she has said about historically Black colleges in the United States and the importance of them. People are maybe not always speaking about their grant-making, but boy, they are doing it behind the scenes."

Apple founder Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs, who holds dual degrees in Political Science and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA from Stanford, is a leading philanthropist through the organization she founded, the Emerson Collective. The Collective blends philanthropic grantmaking with venture capital investments, media ownership and political advocacy.

Her spend-down strategy aims to avoid extreme wealth accumulation in favor of distributing her fortune to key causes. "I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn't care about the accumulation of wealth," she told The New York Times. "I'm not interested in legacy wealth building, and my children know that. Steve wasn't interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me."

She has revealed that the name Emerson Collective was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings "on our ability to transcend limitations that are placed on us by society." She added: "I love the word collective because it acknowledges that we are all at our best when we learn from — and work with — teammates who share a sense of purpose and possibility."

Powell Jobs told the New York Times, "I'm not interested in legacy wealth building, and my children know that. Steve wasn't interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me"

The Collective is structured like an LLC rather than a non-profit, which means that it operates with the flexibility of a private business — allowing it to back commercial startups and purchase media outlets, for example, alongside making traditional charitable grants.

"Dr. Martin Luther King said that philanthropy is a very useful and good tool, but it can't ignore the conditions that created it. I believe that philanthropy is a very powerful tool for good, but it's not the only powerful tool. Mission-driven investing is a tool for good. Art and activism and storytelling are tools for good. The LLC structure allows us the flexibility to creatively use the best attributes of all these models to address emerging needs and opportunities."

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