The last three yeas have been billionaire divorce season, as we’ve watched Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and most recently, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google split from their spouses over a variety of reasons. 

Here’s a look at when these billionaire couples split and why their marriages ended?

Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott

When Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife MacKeenzie Scott split, the internet was rife with rumours over why the duo, who had been married for 25 years, had suddenly decided to call it quits. When they made the announcement, both were suspiciously insistent on the fact that the two had decided to remain friends. So much so that back in 2019, the National Inquirer had decided that people deserved to know the truth of why the Bezos’ marriage ended. 

According to the length article from the gossip tabloid, Jeff Bezos had been engaged in a months-long affair with Lauren Sanchez, the wife of a powerful Hollywood Agent. In turn, Bezos replied to the article with his own blog post on Medium alleging that the gossip newspaper had attempted to extort him using nude selfies. For months afterwards, newspapers latched on to the story with many covering the surreptitious methods that the National Enquirer used to get the information.

Bill Gates and Melinda French

After being married for 27 years and raising three children, Bill Gates and Melinda French decided to go their separate ways. In an announcement made in May last year, the duo had initially been reluctant to talk about their divorce. To those too young to remember, Bill Gates bought out all the rooms in the hotel him and his 130 guests were staying at in Lanai, Hawai. But that’s not all, he bought out all the helicopters on the island to prevent photographers from photographing the wedding. 

Shortly before the divorce was finalised in 2021, the Wall Street Journal made headlines for reporting a story that Gates was asked to step down from the Microsoft board for a years long affair with a Microsoft engineer. However, a representative of Gates said that the decision to step down had nothing to do with the affair.

Elon Musk, Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan

The founder of SpaceX and Tesla is notorious for making headlines on a regular basis. This time around, he’s been accused of courting the co-founder of Google’s wife, Nicole Shanahan. The billionaire who’s been fighting fires at Tesla and the Twitter buyout has had his personal life laid out for everyone to see. Recently he was accused of exposing himself to a SpaceX flight attendant. Last year, he had twins with a female executive at one of his other companies. 

Also Read: Elon Musk-Nicole Shanahan affair: How Tesla CEO responded to reports

Brin and Shanahan divorced earlier this year, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The Wall Street Journal reported that the divorce came several weeks after Brin learnt of the affair. Musk on the other hand has denied that he and the co-founder of Google had a falling out, tweeting on July 25, 2022, “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!” However, in recent months, Brin has had his financial advisers to pull out of investments that the world’s seventh most rich person had made in Musk’s companies, according to the Wall Street Journal report.