Warren Buffett Plans to Give Away Entire $140B Berkshire Stake by 2034

Warren Buffett has set a formal end date for divesting his entire Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) stake, worth more than $140 billion, saying his goal is to "dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years," by December 31, 2034. This year's tranche breaks a two-decade pattern: for the first time, no shares are earmarked for the Bill Gates Foundation .

Under the plan, Buffett is converting 8,000 Class A shares into 12 million Class B shares, with 9 million going to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. At current prices that implies annual gifts of at least $17 billion, more than double the roughly $7 billion in stock he donated last year.

The Gates Foundation's exclusion follows Buffett putting its scheduled donation on hold pending a law firm's review of the charity's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and a 2024 revision to his will naming his three children as trustees of a charitable trust. "The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death," Buffett has said . He also used the week's press cycle to reflect on his career, calling his $147 billion run partly "an accident" traced to his father owning a stock brokerage, and saying he may be "one of the 10 luckiest" people among 8 billion alive today. Separately, he disclosed he personally picked Berkshire's roughly $31 billion stake in Alphabet, the firm's fifth-largest holding behind AAPL, American Express, Coca-Cola and Bank of America, while warning that markets have become "a church with a casino attached" as retail investors pile into speculative trades .

Contrary to speculation that a giving plan of this size could pressure Berkshire's capital policy, the company has never paid a dividend since Buffett took control in 1965, and nothing in this announcement changes that. The more concrete item to watch is downstream: private foundations are generally required to distribute about 5% of assets annually, so the recipient foundations' own payout needs could translate into a steady supply of BRK.B shares hitting the market over time. Incoming CEO Greg Abel's early capital-allocation decisions, including any signal on dividends, are also worth watching as the leadership transition continues.

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