Warren Buffett’s decision to end his Buffett Gates Foundation donations represents the quiet but unmistakable close of a 19-year philanthropic partnership, one that shaped global health spending on a scale that few private relationships in history have matched. The 95-year-old made his intentions clear on Thursday, when Reuters reported that Berkshire Hathaway’s annual mid-year donation, worth approximately $6 billion in the form of 12 million Class B shares, would be split between four family foundations and would exclude the Gates Foundation entirely.
Buffett did not name Bill Gates or Jeffrey Epstein in his statement. He didn’t need to. The context has been building since January, when the US Department of Justice released files detailing Gates’ association with Epstein. In March, Buffett told CNBC he had not spoken to Gates ‘since the whole thing was unveiled,’ and added: ‘I don’t want to be in a position where I know things… to be called as a witness.’
The Scale of What Buffett Is Walking Away From
To appreciate what Thursday’s announcement means, you need to understand what preceded it. In June 2006, Buffett wrote to Bill and Melinda Gates committing to donate 5% of his earmarked Berkshire shares each July, irrevocably, for the rest of his life. The arrangement required the Gates Foundation, beginning in 2009, to give at least the value of his prior year’s gift plus 5% of its net assets annually. His first contribution was expected to lift the foundation’s annual giving by roughly $1.5 billion.
Over time, according to AP News, Buffett’s gifts to the Gates Foundation totalled more than $47 billion. The foundation says it remains financially strong, underpinned by Gates’ separate pledge to donate 99% of his remaining fortune to the charity, which plans to wind down in 2045.
Those who treat Thursday’s move as a sudden rupture are reading the story too narrowly. In 2024, Buffett had already signalled he would stop donations to the Gates Foundation after his own death, preferring to let his three children direct the remaining fortune. What changed this year is that the severance has been brought forward to the present.
The CNBC breakdown of this year’s gift is instructive: 9 million Class B shares go to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, with 1 million shares each directed to three further family foundations, including the Sherwood Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Family, in other words, has replaced partnership. Buffett says his remaining stock will be distributed to those four foundations by 31 December 2034, one way or another.
Buffett Gates Foundation Donations and the Epstein Question
Gates, for his part, has now answered for his association with Epstein before Congress. His closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on 10 June 2026 ran nearly six hours across 138 pages of transcript. In it, Gates said his first meeting with Epstein came at a January 2011 dinner in New York arranged by his former science adviser Boris Nikolic, on the premise that Epstein could raise billions of dollars for global health. According to GeekWire’s reporting on the transcript, Gates said he declined Epstein’s social invitations, including to Epstein’s island, and was clear that Epstein ‘certainly wasn’t a friend.’
Gates told the committee: ‘I recall being aware that Epstein had faced prior legal issues, but I did not fully understand the extent of the crimes he committed.’ He was speaking of a man who, three years before that 2011 dinner, had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution. Epstein died in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Gates’ own accounting of the relationship (introduced for a funding pitch, declined socially, never a friend) may be the most sympathetic version of events available. Whether it is sufficient is a matter others are now deciding. Buffett has evidently decided.
‘I should never have met with Epstein in the first place,’ Gates told the committee. ‘Based on what I know now, I understand that even if he had delivered the donors he promised, it would not have justified associating with him.’
The Gates Foundation was not built to depend on Buffett’s generosity alone, and it will not collapse without it. The question now is whether Gates’ congressional testimony, coupled with his stated contrition, is enough to begin rebuilding the reputational ground lost since January. Buffett’s next annual donation statement, in July 2027, may be the first real answer.
