| FINANCE & INVESTMENT |
Reports state that, in order to provide four family charities a total of about $6 billion, Warren Buffett is increasing the rate at which he donates Berkshire Hathaway shares each year.
Buffett stated in a recent news release that he wants to sell all of his Berkshire shares in around eight years.
In August 2026, Buffett will turn 96 years old. Additionally, he currently holds equity in the business, which has a market value of about $140 billion.
That suggests gifts of at least $17 billion year, more than twice the $7 billion in stock he donated last year, even without accounting for possible rises in Berkshire’s stock price.
Buffett stated the following in the release:
“Mortality is uncertain, of course, but by December 31, 2034, my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations in one manner or another.”
This ends what Buffett stated in 2006 would be a “lifetime pledge” of yearly donations to the foundation founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his then-wife, Melinda Gates, and prevents the Gates Foundation from receiving any more contributions.
He was scheduled to gift over $4.5 billion to the Gates Foundation this month, according to the plan he established at the time, which called for a 5% annual decline in the number of shares.
Buffett, meanwhile, donated almost $1.4 billion to the four family foundations in 2025.
He is donating nine million Class B shares, now valued at about $4.5 billion, to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which bears his late first wife’s name.
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Each of his three children’s foundations—Peter Buffett’s NoVo Foundation, Susie Buffett’s Sherwood Foundation, and Howard G. Buffett Foundation—will get one million Class B shares valued at just less than $500 million.
As long as either Bill or Melinda Gates “remain alive and engaged in [its] policy-setting and administration,” Buffett declared in 2006 that he was “irrevocably pledging to make annual grants of Berkshire Hathaway ‘B’ shares throughout his lifetime” for the Gates Foundation.
But in 2021, two months after Bill and Melinda announced they were ending their 27-year marriage, Buffett resigned as a foundation trustee, causing rifts in what had been a close personal friendship with Bill Gates.
Based on the valuation of the shares at the time of donation, Buffett’s contributions to the Gates Foundation over the past 20 years have come to over $48 billion.
The over 321 million shares that were given to the organization are currently worth about $159 billion. Over the years, it has sold the great majority of them to raise money for its activities.