Key topics:
-
Gates Foundation Trust cut Microsoft stake from 27% to 11%
-
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft; led company until 2000–2014
-
Foundation focuses on global health, child mortality, climate change
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
By MyBroadband Staff Writer
The Gates Foundation Trust, founded by billionaire Bill Gates, has sold a large portion of its Microsoft shares over the last two years.
Bill Gates was born in Seattle in 1955 and wrote his first software program at age 13. In 1975, he dropped out of Harvard University to start Microsoft with Paul Allen.
Microsoft’s personal computer operating system, which later became Windows, was the backbone of the company’s early success.
The company was at the forefront of the computing revolution, and Gates, as CEO, was the face of the emerging tech giant.
The success of Windows laid the foundation for Microsoft to become a diversified tech giant spanning cloud computing, hardware, gaming, and artificial intelligence.
Products like Microsoft 365, formerly known as Microsoft Office, Azure, Xbox, and its range of hardware devices are all generating billions.
Microsoft’s success helped to make Bill Gates the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 1987. From then on, his wealth exploded.
He was regularly listed as the world’s richest person on Forbes’ Billionaires List. He entered the top 10 in 1992 and held the title of the world’s richest person for 16 years, from 1997 to 2017.
Read more:
Gates served as the company’s CEO until 2000, and as its chairman until 2014. He resigned from the board entirely in 2020.
In 2000, after he stepped down as Microsoft chief executive, he and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2025, the names were changed to the Gates Foundation and the Gates Foundation Trust. The foundation has committed to spending its entire endowment and to closing its doors by 2045.
Current efforts focus heavily on reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and eradicating infectious diseases like malaria and polio.
Outside of the foundation, Gates focuses on climate change through Breakthrough Energy, a network of investment funds and programs he founded in 2015.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation details
The Gates Foundation has a two-part structure to separate its charitable work from its investment management.
Under this arrangement, the Gates Foundation focused on awarding grants to achieve its charitable aims.
The Gates Foundation Trust manages the endowment and provides the funding needed for the foundation’s initiatives.
Simply put, it is the financial engine that powers the foundation, with a unique structure and investment strategy.
It holds the money donated by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, as well as the annual instalments from fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.
Starting in 2006, Buffett began donating a massive portion of his Berkshire Hathaway shares to the foundation.
The trust invests these assets to preserve and grow the endowment’s value, and then transfers the proceeds to the Foundation.
In January 2026, the board authorised a historic $9 billion annual budget, the highest in its history, to accelerate progress toward the 2030 global goals.
The Foundation and its staff have no influence on the trust’s investment decisions, strategies, or activities.
Gates Foundation Trust selling Microsoft shares
The Gates Foundation Trust is one of the world’s largest investment pools. Its investment strategy is focused on achieving long-term growth and stability.
Microsoft shares formed the core of its assets as both Bill and Melinda Gates have donated a large portion of their Microsoft shares to the foundation.
In Q3 2022, when a large number of Microsoft shares were added to the trust, it was the portfolio’s largest holding, making up 27%.
However, over the last two years, the Gates Foundation Trust has begun to reduce its stake in Microsoft.
It started in Q4 2023, when it reduced its Microsoft stake by 2.74%. Over the next two years, this trend accelerated.
The latest 13F filing from the Gates Foundation Trust for the quarter ended 31 December 2025, revealed that it significantly reduced its stake in Microsoft.
The trust, with a portfolio value of $35.4 billion, cut its Microsoft holding by 16% over the previous quarter.
Microsoft now only accounts for 11% of the portfolio, lower than Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, and Canadian National Railway Company.
The table below shows the reduction in the Gates Foundation Trust’s Microsoft stake over the last two years.
This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission.
