Warren Buffett and Bill Gates made headlines decades ago when two of the world's richest men pledged to give away the bulk of their fortunes. After tens of billions of dollars in donations, both men are still promising to give billions more away.
They just aren't doing it together.
Buffett didn't donate this year to the Gates Foundation, ending a two-decade run in which the famed investor gifted Berkshire Hathaway shares to the philanthropy. Instead the 95-year-old donated to four Buffett family foundations and said he plans for all his Berkshire shares to be donated to those groups by the end of 2034.
Buffett said his decision to no longer give to the Gates Foundation wasn't based on a souring of his relationship with Gates, or revelations relating to Gates's ties with Jeffrey Epstein. "It's been a wonderful friendship," Buffett said Wednesday on CNBC.
"I've had situations where I made mistakes about people...you know, life goes on, and no one bats 1,000 in the business of choosing people," he said, adding that Gates had recently visited him in Omaha to discuss the donations and that the pair were on good terms.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Buffett was skipping his typical midyear donation to the Gates Foundation to wait to see the findings of a review into the foundation's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Gates has pledged the bulk of his Microsoft fortune to the foundation, which he said will close its doors in 2045.
The move marks a new chapter in the relationship between two of the world's richest men. Buffett and Gates have been close friends for decades and launched the Giving Pledge with Melinda French Gates, aimed at getting the world's richest people to give away their wealth.
Here is a look at some key moments in their friendship:
July 1991: The two men first met after Gates's mother asked her son to meet a group of friends at the Gates's vacation home on Hood Canal in Washington. "It was a deep friendship from our very first conversation," Gates wrote on his website in 2016.
January 2000: Gates and his wife, Melinda French Gates, launch the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The software mogul said he was inspired by Buffett's arguments against inherited wealth.
December 2004: Gates is elected to join Berkshire's board of directors.
June 2006: Buffett says he is "irrevocably committing" to make annual gifts of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation. He also became a trustee of the Gates Foundation that year.
June 2010: The Giving Pledge is launched, aimed at getting the world's richest people to donate most of their wealth. Buffett and the Gates later appear on the cover of Forbes magazine together with Oprah.
July 2016: Gates celebrates "25 years of learning and laughter" with Buffett with a " virtual reality film" of the two men and a blog post. "Warren and I are mostly peers, but sometimes he is so much wiser than I am, he's like a father figure to me," Gates wrote.
April 2019: The two billionaires visit an Omaha-based branch of Dairy Queen, whose parent company is Berkshire. The two men work the cash register and chat with customers.
March 2020: Gates says he is leaving the boards of Berkshire and Microsoft.
May 2021: Bill and Melinda French Gates announce they are divorcing. The next month, Buffett says he is stepping down as a trustee from the Gates Foundation.
June 2024: Buffett tells the Journal that the Gates Foundation has no money coming after his death.
February 2025: Buffett lauds Gates's management abilities in his final letter to shareholders as Berkshire's CEO. "Look at my friend, Bill Gates, who decided that it was far more important to get underway in an exploding industry that would change the world than it was to stick around for a parchment that he could hang on the wall," Buffett wrote in 2025.
May 2025: Gates praises Buffett to the Journal after the investor announces he is stepping down as Berkshire's CEO. "Warren's so unique," Gates said. "I hope we have leaders like Warren in the future."
June 2026: Gates tells lawmakers that the last time he talked to Buffett was in January, before the full release of the Epstein files.
Write to Krystal Hur at krystal.hur@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 15, 2026 07:18 ET (11:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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