The famous American businessman Warren Buffett donated $4.64 billion to five charities on Wednesday, bringing his total donations since 2006 to over $51 billion. This latest annual donation is his largest to date, consisting of about 13.7 million class (B) shares in his company, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett stated in a statement, "Nothing extraordinary has happened at Berkshire: simple and generally sound decisions, combined with American tailwinds, have produced my current wealth."
Buffett donated 10.45 million shares to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has received more than $39 billion in Berkshire shares overall. He also donated 1.05 million shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late first wife, and 2.2 million shares equally divided among charities led by his children Howard, Susan, and Peter, including the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, Sherwood Foundation, and Novo Foundation.
Buffett is gradually relinquishing all the wealth he built in Omaha, Nebraska, where he has been operating since 1965. He and Bill Gates are pioneers of the Giving Pledge, in which over 240 individuals, including Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, Carl Icahn, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, have committed to donating at least half of their wealth to charity. Buffett has already donated more than half of his shares in Berkshire and still possesses over $112.5 billion, or about 15 percent of the company's shares, following Wednesday's donations.
Buffett coined the term "American tailwinds" in 2019 to describe the United States' ability to create long-term wealth, even in times of war and financial crises. He transformed Berkshire into an empire worth around $740 billion through companies like BNSF Railway, Geico, and investments in companies like Apple.
