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Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France on July 01, 2021.

Mustafa Yalcin | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Melinda French Gates, the former wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, announced on Monday she would resign as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation next month.

French Gates said in a statement on X that it was a “critical moment” to protect and advance women’s rights around the world. The announcement comes almost exactly three years after the Gates’ announced their divorce.

She said she will have “an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work on behalf of women and families” as a result of her resignation and the Gates’ divorce agreement. The couple divorced in May 2021.

Bill Gates in a separate statement said, “I am sorry to see Melinda leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work.”

The Gates Foundation’s work has focused on worldwide anti-poverty and global health initiatives, including anti-malaria efforts in Africa, and extensive investment across the Indian subcontinent and South Asia.

French Gates has also devoted significant amounts of time and money toward gender-equality initiatives worldwide. In 2015, she founded Pivotal Ventures, a separate entity from the Gates Foundation, which is focused on removing barriers to access and opportunity for minorities and women in the U.S.

Fractured finances following divorce

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda during an interview in New York on February 22, 2016.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

Gates and French Gates separated in 2021, more than two years after CNBC first reported on the Microsoft co-founder’s relationship with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

French Gates began meeting with divorce lawyers in 2019, after news of Gates’ relationship with Epstein first emerged, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

The Gates Foundation has been one of the most powerful private philanthropic forces in the world in recent decades. Gates directed the lion’s share of his fortune to the foundation along with his family office Cascade.

French Gates joins MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos, in fully separating her philanthropic ventures from her former husband’s.

Here is French Gates’ full statement:

After careful thought and reflection, I have decided to resign from my role as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. My last day of work at the foundation will be June 7th.

This is not a decision I came to lightly. I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world. I care deeply about the foundation team, our partners around the world, and everyone who is touched by its work.

I am taking this step with full confidence that the foundation is in strong shape, with its extremely capable CEO Mark Suzman, the Executive Leadership Team, and an experienced board of trustees in place to ensure all its important work continues. The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy.

This is a critical moment for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world — and those fighting to protect and advance equality are in urgent need of support. Under the terms of my agreement with Bill, in leaving the foundation, I will have an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work on behalf of women and families. I’ll be sharing more about what that will look like in the near future.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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Melinda French Gates to resign from Gates Foundation

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

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October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” 

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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Apple isn’t playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

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October 30, 2025

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Apple isn't playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

While many of the largest tech companies race to build massive data centers for their artificial intelligence ambitions, Apple is taking a more modest approach.

Instead of simply buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple buys computing capacity from outside partners, finance chief Kevan Parekh explained Thursday on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

When Apple does build servers for its AI software, the company is using its own chips — not those from Nvidia or AMD — to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute.

“I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we leverage both first-party capacity as well as leverage third-party capacity,” Parekh said.

Apple’s results on Thursday closed out a busy week of earnings for the tech industry. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta reported on Wednesday, while Amazon reported on Thursday.

All of the companies said they planned to boost spending on capital expenditures to secure the computing capacity needed to develop next-generation AI and serve users.

Alphabet said it expects to spend about $92 billion on capital expenditures this year. Microsoft said it spent about $34.9 billion on capex during the September quarter and will spend more in capex for its fiscal 2026 than it did the year prior.

Meta stock got whacked after CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s plan to spend about $71 billion on AI chips and other expenses in 2025. On Thursday, Amazon raised its 2025 spending forecast 6% to $125 billion.

Compared to them, Apple’s barely spending at all.

In its fiscal 2025, which ended in September, Apple spent $12.72 billion on capital expenditures.

And yet, that’s up 35% from what it spent last year, a significant increase. Parekh said Apple is expecting further increases. Analysts expect Apple’s capex to increase to $14.3 billion this year, according to FactSet.

“In ’25 we did have capex costs associated with building out our Private Cloud Compute environment in our first party data centers,” Parekh said. Earlier this month, Apple announced that it was starting to ship those servers from a factory in Houston.

Last year, the company released Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools that runs on the company’s chips that can summarize notifications, generate images like new emojis, and pass complicated queries to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple Intelligence has received mixed reviews from critics, and one of its centerpieces, an improved Siri assistant, was delayed by the company in May until 2026. The improved Siri is on track to come out next year, Apple said Thursday.

But if Apple’s decision to take a different approach to AI puts the company’s hardware sales at risk, it hasn’t happened yet.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that the consumer response to the company’s iPhone 17 models was “off the chart,” and the company said that overall sales would rise between 10% and 12% in the company’s December quarter. Apple executives were effusive on a call with analysts about the new iPhone’s popularity.

Still, Apple executives are aware that that AI features like Apple Intelligence are a factor in smartphone purchasing decisions.

“We’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” Cook said.

Apple’s “hybrid” approach means that some of what the company spends on compute for AI ends up as an operating expense, instead of a capital expense. Analysts pressed Apple executives that the company’s operating expenses rose 11% in the past year to $15.91 billion.

“We are increasing our investments in AI, while also continuing to invest in our product roadmap,” Parekh said. “The vast majority of the increase to our operating expenses are driven by R&D.”

WATCH: Apple will outperform Amazon from tomorrow to end of year, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster

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