Bill Gates’ investments revealed
The biggest holdings in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust are Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, Caterpillar, and Canadian National Railway.
Gates is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen, which made him the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2017.
After resigning from day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates focused his energy on investing, writing, and philanthropy endeavours.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched in 2000 to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty worldwide, has taken up most of his time since retirement.
Despite spending billions on charitable causes through the foundation, Gates remains one of the world’s richest men, with a net worth of around $132 billion.
Daily Investor looked at Gates’ biggest holdings to see how he invested his fortune and ensured it grew.
He does not need to disclose all of his investments, so we pieced together the disclosed parts of his investment portfolio.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates held $52.5 billion in cash, making up his largest holding and showing the defensive nature of his portfolio.
Gates is also still a major shareholder in Microsoft. He owns 103.4 million shares in the company, making up 1.38% of the total Microsoft shares.
Gates has also been making significant investments in farmland, making him the largest landowner in the United States, with approximately 242 000 acres.
His investment company, Cascade Investment Group, holds most of Gates’ net worth. Cascade is not a public company and therefore does not need to disclose most of its investments.
Gates’ long-serving investing manager, Michael Larson, runs the company. He also runs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, so one can assume that the investing style will be similar.
Larson originally managed $11.5 billion of the Gates fortune and foundation, but it has increased to an estimated $80 billion as Gates sold his Microsoft stock.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust shareholdings
The table below shows the shareholdings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.
| Name | Value ($ Million) | Portfolio Weight |
| Berkshire Hathaway | $9,471 | 53.6% |
| Waste Management | $2,851 | 16.1% |
| Caterpillar | $1,315 | 7.4% |
| Canadian National Railway | $1,156 | 6.5% |
| Ecolab | $671 | 3.8% |
| Walmart | $367 | 2.1% |
| Coca-Cola Femsa SAB de CV | $344 | 1.9% |
| Deere | $269 | 1.5% |
| Microsoft | $243 | 1.4% |
| Crown Castle International | $239 | 1.4% |
| Schrodinger | $184 | 1.0% |
| United Parcel Service | $135 | 0.8% |
| FedEx | $121 | 0.7% |
| Sanderson Farms | $113 | 0.6% |
| Madison Square Garden Sports | $89 | 0.5% |
| Coupang | $73 | 0.4% |
| Weber | $18 | 0.1% |
| Carvana | $12 | 0.1% |
| On Holding | $9 | 0.1% |
| Vroom | $3 | 0.0% |
