Gates said it in a student question-and-answer session during his February 2004 tour of university computer-science departments. The earliest documented printing is Steve Lohr’s report in The New York Times of 1 March 2004 (story starts p. C1; the quotation is on p. C2, col. 6), where it runs “If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn,” Mr. Gates responded, “that is worth 10 Microsofts” — a citation traced by Quote Investigator, which credits Gates.
“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts” Bill Gates, answering a student in a Q&A on his February 2004 university tour: "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts." First documented in Steve Lohr, "Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career," The New York Times, 1 March 2004, quotation on p. C2.
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In context
Evoking the world of Bill Gates — Microsoft co-founder; chief software architect, 2000–2008. Theme: "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the line is documented
Report
Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
Publication
The New York Times, 1 March 2004, by Steve Lohr — starts p. C1; quotation p. C2, col. 6
Occasion
A student question-and-answer session on Gates’s February 2004 university tour
Traced by
Quote Investigator, 10 November 2017
“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn,” Mr. Gates responded, “that is worth 10 Microsofts.”
The New York Times, 1 March 2004, p. C2
The question that prompted it, as printed six weeks later by Investor’s Business Daily and quoted by Quote Investigator: at a stop at MIT, a student asked Gates whether another tech company could ever match Microsoft’s success.
1 March 2004 — the earliest citation.Quote Investigator gives Steve Lohr’s New York Times piece “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career” — start page C1, quotation page C2, column 6 — as the first documented printing.
February 2004 — the setting. Gates was midway through a five-campus swing taking in Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Illinois, according to the Harvard Gazette, arguing that computing was still worth studying after the dot-com crash.
26 April 2004 — the second printing.Investor’s Business Daily ran Patrick Seitz’s report quoting the same answer and placing the exchange at MIT, as reproduced by Quote Investigator.
2009 onward — the drift begins. Quote Investigator logs the remark resurfacing in a Minneapolis paper in January 2009 and, that July, in InformationWeek in the loosened form “a breakthrough in machine learning could be worth 10 Microsofts” — the ancestor of today’s sourceless aggregator version.
The words were spoken in public in February 2004 and first documented in a New York Times news report published 1 March 2004 — both far too recent for US public domain, where the cutoff currently sits at works first published before 1931. Short quotation with attribution is ordinary fair-use practice; the article itself remains the newspaper’s copyright.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Right name, drifting words
This is the unusual case on a fact-check site: the famous name actually said it. What has gone wrong is the wording. The version most often pasted online is smoother, shorter and sourceless — and it swaps the term Gates used.
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Wording“A breakthrough in machine learning would be worth ten Microsofts” paraphrase
The aggregator form, circulated with no source or date attached. It substitutes “machine learning” for Gates’s “artificial intelligence,” spells out “ten,” and drops the conditional “If you invent…” that made it an answer to a student’s challenge rather than a market forecast.
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Wording“a breakthrough in machine learning could be worth 10 Microsofts” trade-press paraphrase
How the line already appeared in InformationWeek in July 2009, per the citation list assembled by Quote Investigator. The “machine learning” substitution is old, and it is where the modern aggregator wording most likely comes from.
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Punctuation“…artificial intelligence so machines can learn…” minor variant
The commonly circulated form runs the clause together. The New York Times text has a comma — “artificial intelligence, so machines can learn” — while the unpunctuated version matches what Investor’s Business Daily printed in April 2004, both reproduced by Quote Investigator.
✓The attribution is sound. Quote Investigator concludes that Bill Gates should be credited with the quotation as given in the 1 March 2004 New York Times article — if you want the exact words, use that version, with its comma.
Context
Why he was on a campus stage at all
The dot-com crash had done something Microsoft found genuinely alarming: it scared students off. As Quote Investigator sets the scene, wary undergraduates watched internet stock prices collapse and the number of computer science majors fell, so in 2004 Gates went on the road to tell them the opportunities were still there. The Harvard Gazette counted five campuses on the swing: Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Illinois.
The “10 Microsofts” line was not the speech. It was the answer to a heckle-adjacent student question — could any company ever match what Microsoft had done? — and Gates chose to answer it by naming the prize rather than defending the record. Machines that learn, he said, would be worth an order of magnitude more than the company he built.
That is worth 10 Microsofts.
What Gates was saying on the rest of the tour
Artificial intelligence was a running theme, not a one-off. At Carnegie Mellon he lectured on “Software Breakthroughs: Solving the Toughest Problems in Computer Science” on 25 February and praised the university’s work in artificial intelligence and speech recognition. At Cornell he named developing AI as, in the Cornell Chronicle’s account, the ultimate in computer science achievement.
The line has had a long second life. Quote Investigator records it resurfacing in a Minneapolis newspaper in January 2009 and in InformationWeek that July, and it has been recycled steadily since by investment writers whenever machine learning is back in the headlines — usually with the 2004 setting stripped off.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 28 October 1955 · Microsoft co-founder; chief software architect, 2000–2008
William Henry Gates III co-founded Microsoft and ran it as chief executive until 2000, when he handed the CEO role to Steve Ballmer and became chief software architect, a post he held until 2008. That was his title in February 2004, when he toured a run of American university campuses arguing that computer science was still worth studying after the dot-com crash. The AI line came out of a student Q&A on that tour — an off-the-cuff answer, not a prepared slide, which is part of why it took a researcher with newspaper-database access to pin down where it first appeared in print.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Steve Lohr, “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career,” The New York Times, 1 March 2004, C1; quotation on C2, col. 6. Citation traced in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: If You Invent a Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence So Machines Can Learn, That Is Worth 10 Microsofts,” 10 November 2017.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-invent-a-breakthrough-in-artificial-intelligence-so/