Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing, bonus story of the week.

Today on Forbes, Bill Gates would be worth a lot more than Elon Musk if he'd kept his Microsoft stock.

In early May, Bill Gates publicly reiterated that he'll give away almost all of his remaining wealth

and wind down the namesake charitable foundation he co-founded with his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, by the end

of 2045.

Fueled by Microsoft's soaring stock price and dividends, Bill and Melinda have already poured

a combined $60.2 billion into the Gates Foundation since its founding in 2000, helping cement their status

as America's second biggest philanthropists. Even after their generosity, they're still the 13th

and 56th richest people in the world, worth an estimated $113 billion and $30.4 billion, respectively.

But what if Bill and Melinda never discovered philanthropy and never sold a share of Microsoft?

Forbes figures they'd be worth $1.5 trillion combined, and Bill would likely be the world's first

trillionaire, with a $1.2 trillion fortune, even after his

2021 divorce.

That's more than triple the net worth of Elon Musk, the richest person ever.

Musk's estimated net worth is $38 billion, though he peaked at $464 billion in December.

Melinda, meanwhile, would be worth an estimated $300 billion, assuming she would have gotten the

same estimated percentage of the couple's assets in the divorce, which would make her

the third richest person in the world after Bill and Musk.

Just before he took Microsoft Public in 1986, Bill owned 11.2 million shares of the company,

representing a 49% stake worth around $200 million based on the IPO price.

If he'd held on to all of that stock for the next four decades, he and Melinda would now own

3.2 billion shares combined after stock splits,

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