The rise and fall of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s long friendship

A ten-year friendship.

Gates and Buffett’s friendship can be traced back to one day: July 5, 1991.

Gates’ mother, Mary, invited the late Meg Greenfield, editor of the Washington Post, to her home. Greenfield plans to bring his friend Buffett, Business Insider previously reported.

Gates didn’t want to take a day off.

Mary Gates was pushing her son to join them, but he didn’t want to take a day off, Business Insider reported.

“What did he and I have to talk about, P/E ratios?” Gates later wrote in a Fortune column. But he chose to appear because Greenfield also planned to bring legendary Post publisher Kathryn Graham, whom Gates wanted to speak with.

Friendship and mentorship alike.

Buffett has attended numerous Microsoft events, but has never served on the company’s board or invested in the tech company, Business Insider previously reported.

In 2018, he said it would be a conflict of interest due to their close friendship.

But Gates didn’t have the same concern.

Gates doesn’t seem to worry that much about conflicts of interest.

He joined Berkshire Hathaway’s board in 2004 after the death of Buffett’s first wife, who was a board member, Market Watch reported.

Both say they have laser focus.

Both attribute their enormous success to laser focus, writes Alice Schroeder in her biography of Buffett. Gates writes that he learned from Buffett how to manage his time by prioritizing certain people and tasks.

Shortly after they first met, Gates said he asked Buffett for a recommendation for his favorite business book, and Buffett gave Gates his copy of Business Adventures by John Brooks.

Now it’s also Gates’ favorite business book, and he still has Buffett’s copy.

Uniting causes.

They have often joined forces for political and philanthropic causes.

In 2010, Gates and Buffett, along with Gates’ then-wife Melinda French Gates, launched The Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes during their lifetimes or in their wills. About $600 billion has been pledged to date.

Gates also credits Buffett with inspiring him to found the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

Buffett poured billions into the Gates Foundation.

Buffett has given some of his fortune, including Berkshire shares, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2006, he pledged to give 99% of his fortune to philanthropy and said the Gates Foundation would be the largest recipient of his donations during his lifetime.

Buffett’s contributions to the Gates Foundation from 2006 to 2023 total at least $39 billion, accounting for the appreciation of Berkshire’s stock over time, The New York Times reported.

They also advocated for policy change.

In 2014, Gates, Buffett and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for immigration reform.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Buffett called Gates his “scientific advisor.” In February 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $100 million to fight the pandemic.

During the pandemic, they spoke often.

Before the pandemic, they were seen trying out mattresses in Buffett’s hometown, enjoying Dairy Queen and playing ping pong.

In July 2020, Yahoo’s Andy Server wrote that during the pandemic, Warren and Gates were “talking more regularly”. Buffett told Server that the two men had scheduled weekly one-hour calls, but they usually went beyond the allotted time.

That same year, Gates resigned from his positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft. The billionaire said he wanted to “dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities.”

But things developed amid changes in Gates’s life.

Over the years, Buffett’s feelings toward Gates seem to have cooled. The New York Times reported in August that Buffett had come to believe that the Gates Foundation had become bureaucratically bloated, hampering philanthropic productivity. He was disheartened to hear that some people found Gates rude.

Following the death of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2019, news emerged that Gates had met with Epstein on multiple occasions. Gates later said the meetings were for charity and were a “huge mistake.”

After that, things changed even more.

In 2021, Gates and his wife announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage. Shortly thereafter, Buffett resigned from the three-member board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical involvement is in no way necessary to achieve those goals,” Buffett said at the time.

Buffett said his gifts to the foundation will not continue after his death.

In a 2022 blog post, Gates said half of the Gates Foundation’s resources came from Buffett’s gifts.

However, Buffett, who is 93, said recently that his 2006 commitment to the foundation would last only as long as he lived.

In 2023, he detailed plans for the distribution of his wealth after his death, leaving it to his three children to spread it around. Buffett made no mention of the Gates foundation, and The New York Times reported that his children unanimously agreed that none of Berkshire’s remaining stock would go to the foundation.

Gates stopped posting so much about Buffett.

On his blog, Gates once wrote regularly about Buffett.

In 2018, he wrote about how the two friends visited a “fantastic” candy store in Ohama, where Buffett lives and works. In 2019, Gates wrote a post titled “Baking and Chilling with Warren.” In 2020, Gates wished Buffett a happy 90th birthday. Includes a photo of him holding a cake with Buffett’s face on it.

But the few posts in 2021 and 2022 that mention Buffett are purely business. Instead of writing about the travels of dumb boys, Gates thanked Buffett for his generous donations to the Gates Foundation. In 2023, Gates did not mention Buffett in any posts. And in his more than 20 posts so far in 2024, Gates has only mentioned Buffett once, again focusing solely on philanthropy.