Warren Buffett, the 95-year-old billionaire investor, has announced a sweeping overhaul of his philanthropic plans, redirecting nearly his entire fortune away from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to charitable organizations controlled by his three children. In an interview Wednesday, Buffett explained that the decision stems primarily from his confidence that his children are now ready to handle the enormous responsibility of distributing his vast wealth, rather than stemming from concerns about Bill Gates’ ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“I tell the three children that it is theirs, and it’s their responsibility to get it done well,” Buffett said in a CNBC interview. He emphasized that his confidence in his children’s maturity and abilities has been built over decades of preparation.
The dramatic shift marks the end of nearly two decades of giving to the Gates Foundation, which has received approximately $48 billion from Buffett since 2006. On Tuesday, Buffett announced he would donate nearly $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to four family-linked foundations this year—for the first time excluding the Gates Foundation from his annual charitable contributions. The decision represents one of the most significant philanthropic realignments in modern history.
Buffett said he wanted to accelerate distributions of his remaining Berkshire shares. He announced that all of his remaining stock holdings—currently worth more than $140 billion—will be distributed to four charitable foundations by December 31, 2034, an eight-year timeline. To accomplish this, he will need to increase his annual charitable giving to more than $17 billion, more than double what he gave last year. That compares to roughly $6 billion in annual gifts his children’s foundations currently receive.
His rationale for the accelerated timeline is straightforward. “My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years. As I explained last year, my children are unfortunately growing older. I have every hope that the three of them are able to carry out the disposal of my shares by December 31, 2034,” Buffett said. He noted that he wants his children to be able to make decisions about the wealth distribution while they are still active and engaged, rather than leaving the burden to their heirs or executors. His oldest child will be nearly 81 in eight years.
When asked directly about Epstein, Buffett acknowledged that Gates’ association with the financier was “distasteful,” but he argued that such mistakes are not uncommon. “I read a great deal since Jan. 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination. While it’s distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes, hiring all kinds of people, or choosing friends, and then finding out later that, one way or other, they weren’t what I thought they were. No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people,” he said.
Despite the redirection of giving, Buffett said Gates was not blindsided by the decision. He noted that Gates visited Omaha a few weeks ago and they spent three hours together. “He came by Omaha three weeks ago. I kind of lose track of time, but certainly not three months, and we spent three hours talking together. He intends to call me. He already proposed another meeting,” Buffett said.
The acknowledgment contradicted an earlier statement from Buffett, who had told CNBC in March that he had not spoken to Gates “at all since the whole thing was unveiled” regarding the Epstein files. The billionaires have known each other for more than three decades and co-founded The Giving Pledge in 2010, a commitment through which the world’s wealthy pledge to give away the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.
Buffett’s shift reflects a longer period of growing distance from the Gates Foundation. After Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce in 2021, Buffett resigned from the foundation’s board. He had previously expressed concerns about the organization becoming bureaucratically bloated. In 2024, he told the Wall Street Journal that the Gates Foundation would receive nothing from his estate after his death, a statement that signaled the end of his decades-long partnership with the organization.
The four organizations receiving Buffett’s wealth reflect the philanthropic interests of his children. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late wife, provides scholarships to Nebraska college students and received the largest allocation of this year’s gift—9 million Class B shares worth approximately $4.5 billion. The Sherwood Foundation, headed by his daughter Susie, focuses on early childhood education and social justice in Nebraska. The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, run by his son Howard, works on food security, conflict resolution, and combating human trafficking internationally. The NoVo Foundation, led by his son Peter, supports health and economic programs for women and children.
Buffett acknowledged earlier this year that his original grand philanthropic plans had not been feasible. “Early on, I contemplated various grand philanthropic plans. Though I was stubborn, these did not prove feasible,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders released last November. Instead of a centralized approach, he has given his three children’s foundations about $500 million annually to distribute, trusting them to make decisions based on current needs rather than his predetermined vision for how the money should be spent.
The Gates Foundation said in response to the announcement that it remains in a position of financial strength. “The Gates Foundation is grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support for our work. His gifts, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world. The foundation continues from a position of financial strength to advance our work through 2045, supported by Bill’s $200 billion commitment,” the organization stated. Gates himself has committed to dramatically increasing his own foundation’s spending and plans to eventually close it in 2045 after distributing his remaining wealth.
The distribution of Buffett’s fortune to his children represents an unprecedented transfer of philanthropic power. The magnitude means his children will collectively be responsible for giving away at least $15 billion annually—roughly equivalent to 4 percent of all charitable giving in the United States. Howard Buffett, the oldest child, said of the responsibility: “It’s something nobody has done, certainly not as a family.”