Bill Gates's farmland produces McDonald's fries — and 4 other fascinating facts from a new book on the ex-Microsoft CEO (2024)

In it are also some fascinating nuggets — like Gates's farmland supplying the potatoes for McDonald's fries.

The book, "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World," came out this week from New York Times correspondent Anupreeta Das.

It hasn't been greeted warmly by Gates. A Bill Gates spokesperson told Business Insider of the new book: "Relying almost exclusively on second- and third-hand hearsay and anonymous sources, the book includes highly sensationalized allegations and outright falsehoods that ignore the actual documented facts our office provided to the author on numerous occasions."

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the book:

Gates took the Microsoft antitrust case personally

Gates was "personally wounded" by the US Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s, according to the book.

"'This makes no sense to me at all,'" Gates would say, in the words of one former Microsoft employee who spoke with him often on the company's media strategy. 'I don't understand how your government comes for you when you're one of the bright lights and contributing to the economy,'" the book reads.

"Bill was confused into thinking [by Microsoft's lawyers] it was a legal case, when it was always political. Bill didn't understand that," former Microsoft exec Bob Muglia told Das. "It really hurt Bill. It was a personal attack on him."

The workplace culture at the Gates Foundation could be rough

The book also offers a glimpse into a workplace culture with a constant "low hum of fear" at the Gates Foundation.

"He's the scariest person in the world to provide a recommendation or briefing to because he scans a page and comes back at you saying something like, 'What you say in the footnote on page 9 does not match with the footnote on page 28,'" one former foundation employee says in the book.

Following Gates's divorce from Melinda French Gates in 2021, employees were increasingly torn between the two "power centers" of Team Melinda and Team Bill, the book says.

"One recently departed employee observed that people at the foundation fall into three types: consiglieres who bow to Gates; young aspirants who are awed by him; and the skeptics who find Gates domineering and eventually leave," the book reads.

Gates's farmland produces potatoes for McDonald's fries

In her book, Das writes that Gates has an agricultural team that handles his farm investments. His land produces carrots, corn — and some of the potatoes McDonald's uses for its famous fries.

Gates has quite the real estate empire. He's one of the top landowners in the US, with more than 275,000 acres as of April.

The majority of that is made up of farmland in several states, and he's spent millions of dollars to add to his portfolio. Despite some pushback from locals, Gates has previously said his ultimate goal will benefit others.

"I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs," Gates said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything in 2023. "There isn't some grand scheme involved — in fact, all these decisions are made by a professional investment team."

Gates is a hotelier with strict boundaries

In 2021, his investment firm bought a controlling stake in the luxury hotel chain Four Seasons, where he's been an investor since 1997. However, Gates is typically uninvolved in negotiations about his investments, and Das writes that he still keeps his ventures separate.

"Because of Gates's ownership stake in Four Seasons, employees of the Gates Foundation are typically not allowed to stay at any of their hotels to avoid any appearance of impropriety," the book says.

Gates is investing billions in building a new tech hub in Tampa

Das shares more details about the 2016 partnership between Gates's investment firm and investor Jeff Vinik to develop an ecosystem in Tampa, Florida, similar to that of Hudson Yards in Manhattan.

She writes that Vinik sold his stake to Gate's Cascade Investment LLC in 2023, putting Gates's firm in control of the Water Street project, which will likely cost around $4 billion. It's the city's largest real estate development in recent history, and it's set to be complete in 2027, according to the book.

"The bet is that Tampa will become a destination for tech companies, and young, urban workers will follow, bringing business and hipness to central Florida's often overlooked city," Das writes.