The Microsoft co-founder and his partner, who established the world’s largest charity foundation, said they will continue to work together.

They announced their intention to end their 27-year marriage in identical messages.

In a statement, they said, “We have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life .”

Melinda Gates wrote about her upbringing, marriage, and private challenges as the wife of a public figure and stay-at-home mom with three children in her 2019 book, “The Moment of Lift.” After meeting at a work party, sharing a mutual love of puzzles, and defeating him at a math game, she earned Gates’ heart.

With an endowment of approximately $50 billion, the couple’s vast Seattle-based foundation is arguably the most powerful private foundation in the world. After its inception in 2000, it has concentrated on global health and sustainability as well as education concerns in the United States.

The pair wed in Hawaii in 1994. They met in 1987, when she started working at Microsoft as a product manager.

Bill Gates, the former world’s wealthiest man, announced last year that he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board of directors to concentrate on philanthropy.

Gates served as CEO of Microsoft until 2000, during which he eventually reduced his role in the business he co-founded with Paul Allen in 1975. In 2008, he left his day-to-day job at Microsoft and became chairman of the board of directors, a position he held until 2014.

In recent years, the Gateses would be the second high-profile Seattle-area billionaire couple to divorce.

In 2019, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos divorced. Since then, MacKenzie Scott has remarried and is now concentrating on her own philanthropy. She got a 4% interest in Amazon, valued at over $36 billion.