Bill Gates’ daughter reveals father has Asperger’s syndrome after comments about autism spectrum

Phoebe Gates appears to have revealed that her father, Bill Gates, has Asperger’s syndrome.

During this week’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alex Cooper asked the 22-year-old daughter of the billionaire Microsoft co-founder what her experience has been with bringing men home to her dad.

Her response: “For the guy, terrifying. For me, it’s hilarious because my dad’s pretty socially awkward. Like he’s said before, he has Asperger’s. So, like to me, it’s so funny.”

The Independent has contacted Bill’s representatives for comment.

The 69-year-old software engineer has never spoken publicly about having Asperger’s syndrome, a neurodevelopmental condition and form of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that results in social and communication difficulties, or confirmed he’s been diagnosed with it. However, in his 2025 memoir, Source Code, he admitted he believed he would have been diagnosed with a form of ASD if he were a child being raised today.

“If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. During my childhood, the fact that some people’s brains process information differently from others wasn’t widely understood,” he wrote.

“My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues, and could be rude and inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.”

Bill also noted that the term “neurodivergent,” used to describe people whose brains form or work differently, wasn’t coined until the 1990s.

Formal testing for ASD wasn’t introduced until the 1980s, and by that time, Bill was already in his late 20s and early 30s.

Bill further opened up about realizing he was different from his peers growing up in a February interview with Axios.

“I always knew I was different in ways that confused people in terms of my energy level and intensity, and going off and just studying things,” he said. “And it's a little confusing when you're a kid, that you're different, or people react to you in some ways, or your social skills — you're miscuing on various things.

“I definitely think my parents, maybe somewhat unintentionally, because there was no diagnosis, but the way they would explain things to me or push me to socialize was very helpful,” he continued.

Bill also reflected on the first time someone suggested he had ASD: “Somebody said to me, ‘Are you on the spectrum?’ It was like 25 years ago, I remember thinking, ‘What the hell? What the hell? I run a goddamn company.’ And then I realized, well, actually, it’s probably true. I mean, the spectrum thing is confusing.”