Buffett excludes Gates Foundation from $6 billion charity plan

Warren Buffett left the Gates Foundation out of this year’s charitable gifts and directed about $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to four family-linked foundations instead. The gift covers 12 million Class B shares and comes alongside a new deadline for his remaining Berkshire holdings, worth nearly $146 billion, to reach charity by the end of 2034.

For nearly two decades, Buffett’s annual midyear gifts to the Gates Foundation had been the centerpiece of his giving. The 2024 annual report lists Buffett’s latest installment at $4.6 billion and his total gifts over 19 years at more than $47 billion. The facts page puts Buffett’s giving from 2006 through 2025 at $47.9 billion and the trust endowment at $89 billion as of December 31, 2025. In 2022, the foundation put Buffett’s donations at $36 billion.

Bill Gates’s past interactions with Jeffrey Epstein have intensified scrutiny of the reputational risks surrounding major philanthropy. Gates has denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has not been accused of wrongdoing. Buffett and Gates were once unusually close, playing bridge, vacationing together and overlapping on Berkshire and Gates Foundation boards. Buffett had already signaled in late June that he was pausing his usual donation while waiting for an Epstein-related review, and in a March 31 interview he declined to commit to continuing the annual multibillion-dollar gifts.

The change also rewrites Buffett’s succession plan. He had previously expected his children to distribute his remaining Berkshire stock after his death, but the transfers will be handled by the family foundations during his lifetime or by the end of the 2034 window. The Gates Foundation is based in Seattle and works mainly in low- and middle-income countries under CEO Mark Suzman.