Is Melinda Gates Dating Again? What Her Love Life & Career Looks Like After Splitting From Bill

In May of 2021, the general public became privy to one of the single most expensive divorces of all time when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates announced that they had gone their separate ways. Bill wasted little time before moving on from his marriage of nearly 30 years, given that he reportedly began his relationship with girlfriend Paula Hurd in 2023. 

To be fair, from everything we know about Bill and Melinda's divorce, it seemed to be in the works long before they actually went public with it. But what about Melinda? After all, both she and Bill were already getting up there in age at the time of their divorce, and regardless of her massive wealth, that can make getting back into the dating game even more intimidating than it already is. Much like her ex, however, Melinda seems to have landed on her feet with respect to both her love life and her career.

By late 2024, it certainly seemed like Melinda had a new man in her life, as she was spotted holding hands with entrepreneur Philip Vaughn, an ex-Microsoft employee who left the company in 2008. Several months later, in early April of 2025, Melinda confirmed that she was indeed dating again, though didn't publicly name Vaughn as her new beau. Nevertheless, things appeared to be going well. "[I'm] very, very happy," Melinda told People at the time, adding, "I'm just going to leave it there. I'm quite happy." She should be, considering she likely received at least $75 billion from the divorce. So, yeah, we think Melinda is going to be just fine without Bill.

Shortly after her interview with People, Melinda French Gates once again confirmed that she was seeing someone new during an appearance on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on April 15, 2025. Once again, however, she didn't name names. This isn't particularly surprising; after all, in that very same interview, she also acknowledged that she does like to live as privately as possible, given her status. Still, even as Melinda pushes on with her career, she knows that people are going to have questions about her divorce from Bill Gates.

In fact, Melinda was on Stephen Colbert's show in the first place to promote her memoir, "The Next Day," in which she addresses the split. "I thought it would be, first of all, disingenuous if I didn't write about the transition out of my marriage, because people knew it had happened to me, and it happens to, unfortunately, a lot of families," Melinda told Colbert. But beyond the book and beyond her love life, Melinda shows no signs of slowing down professionally.

For instance, though she left the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in June 2024, she has by no means left philanthropy behind. Melinda has simply chosen to focus on her own organization, Pivotal Ventures. And in December 2024, Pivotal announced that Melinda would be "committing an additional $1 billion through 2026 to advance women's power and influence globally." As part of the announcement, Melinda herself remarked that putting more money behind female-driven progress is something that ultimately "benefits everyone."