Bill Gates Is Betting Two-Thirds Of His Foundation's Portfolio In These 3 Stocks

The Gates Foundation Trust, founded by the billionaire Bill Gates, has a portfolio valued at $41.806 billion, which is concentrated in these three stocks as of the end of the first quarter of 2025.

What Happened: The foundation has received donations from Gates and the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, since the year 2000 and 2006, respectively. Additionally, it reflects the approaches of both Gates and Buffett.

According to its 13F filings, the three major stock holdings in the foundation’s portfolio made up at least two-thirds or 66% of the fund’s holdings as of the first quarter of the ongoing calendar year.

Microsoft Corp.

• Microsoft stock has driven the Gates Foundation’s holdings to nearly $11 billion.
• This surge is largely due to Microsoft’s dominant position in artificial intelligence, particularly through its Azure cloud platform and OpenAI investment.
• Gates has steadily contributed Microsoft stock to the foundation since its inception in 2000.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

• Buffett has also donated the Class B shares to the Gates Foundation since 2006, maintaining voting control by converting his Class A shares.
• Despite a requirement for annual grant payouts, the foundation still holds 17.17 million Berkshire shares, valued at about $9.145 billion.

Waste Management Inc.

• The Gates Foundation Trust has held a stake in Waste Management since 2002, exemplifying Buffett’s value investing principles.
• WM is a waste management, comprehensive waste, and environmental services company having a landfill portfolio at an operational scale.

See Also: Microsoft Is ‘Playing Chess, And Others Are Playing Checkers:’ Dan Ives Says MSFT Could Be A $5 Trillion Company In 18 Months

Why It Matters: Microsoft has been under the analyst radar, as it has been receiving recent price target bumps and upgrades.

Microsoft's strategic initiatives, including the integration of Copilot into Office, Dynamics, and Teams, are significantly deepening subscription revenues, explained Nigam Arora in his recent report.

He added that Microsoft's cloud computing arm, Aruzre, remained a compelling growth driver, exhibiting double-digit growth that is currently outstripping competitors and maintaining healthy margins.

Meanwhile, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has said that the “massive adoption wave” of AI-driven Azure services could propel Microsoft to become a $5 trillion company over the next 18 months. –

Price Action: MSFT shares were down 0.012% in after-hours on Monday after ending 0.30% higher at $497.41 apiece. It has risen by 18.83% on a year-to-date basis and 8.91% over the past year.

Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings shows that MSFT had a stronger price trend over the short, medium, and long term. Its momentum ranking was solid; however, its value ranking was poor at the 13.14th percentile. The details of other metrics are available here.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF QQQ, which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, ended higher on Monday. The SPY was up 0.48% at $617.85, while the QQQ advanced 0.65% to $551.64, according to Benzinga Pro data.

After hitting fresh records on Friday and Monday, the futures of the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow Jones indices were trading lower on Tuesday.

Read Next:

• Microsoft Stock Could Soar 44% On AI Boom, Analyst Says — But There’s A Catch

Photo courtesy: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com