Bill Gates is reportedly dating the widow of late tech company CEO Mark Hurd. File picture: Gus Ruelas, Reuters
BILL Gates is reportedly dating the widow of late tech company CEO Mark Hurd.
The Microsoft billionaire, 67, was married to his now ex-wife, Melinda Gates, 58, for 27 years, but they finalised their divorce in August 2021, and he is now said to have been romancing Paula Hurd – whose Oracle boss husband Mark died aged 62 in October 2019 after a reported cancer battle – for more than a year.
A friend of the rumoured new couple told the Daily Mail on Wednesday about how they are “inseparable”: “They’ve been together over a year, and she’s always described as a ‘mystery woman,’ but it’s no mystery to their inner circle that they’re in a romantic relationship.”
Hurd’s husband had an estimated net worth of $500-million at the time of his death, while Gates – who has children Jennifer, 26, Rory, 23, and Phoebe, 20, with Melinda – has a net worth of $106-billion.
Mark ran computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard from 2005 to 2010, but left over a sexual harassment scandal and joined Oracle a month later.
Hurd, who once worked as a tech executive and is now an event planner and philanthropist who had daughters Kathryn and Kelly with Mark, shares mutual friends with Gates and they have bonded over their passion for tennis.
They were photographed sitting in the same box at a tennis match in 2015 and last month were spotted watching the Men’s Singles Final together at the Australian Open in Melbourne, Australia.
The pair fuelled more rumours they are an item after they were spotted walking together around the city.
Gates told the ‘Today’ show in May last year he caused “pain” in his marriage to Melinda but declined to discuss “the particulars”, though amid his divorce he admitted to having an affair with a Microsoft employee more than 20 years earlier.