Bill Gates' foundation sold its entire stake in Microsoft for more than $3 billion

Microsoft founder Bill Gates' foundation no longer owns Microsoft shares. The Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the money of the Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Charitable Foundation, has reported the sale of its remaining 7.7 million shares in the largest software developer, worth $3.2 billion at current market prices.

According to documents filed by Gates Foundation Trust with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the sale took place in the first quarter of 2026. A year ago, the foundation owned 28.5 million Microsoft shares worth $10.7 billion, which, as of March 2025, represented 26% of the fund's total holdings. By the end of 2025, the bigtech's share of Gates' portfolio had dropped to 10.5% - but even with that reduction, Microsoft remained one of the fund's top five positions.

Cascade Asset Management, which manages the Gates Foundation Trust, did not respond to Barron 's request for comment on the fund's recent transactions. Despite the legal structure, Gates is the sole trustee of the fund and influences its investment decisions. And despite the latest transactions of the fund, Gates himself, according to FactSet, still continues to own 103 million shares of Microsoft for a total of $43 billion, Barron's notes.

In addition to exiting its position in Microsoft securities, in the first quarter Gates Foundation Trust also reduced the share of investment company Berkshire Hathaway in its portfolio (sold 2.3 million shares) and waste disposal operator Waste Management (sold 1.29 million shares). Nevertheless, the trust's positions in these assets are among the largest in the fund's portfolio: Gates Foundation continues to own Berkshire Hathaway shares worth $8.17 billion and Waste Management securities worth $6.35 billion. Other transactions in Gates Foundation Trust's portfolio, according to documents filed by the fund with the SEC, were not carried out in the first three months of 2026.

Among other large assets of the fund remained: securities of the railway company Canadian National Railway (at $5.3 billion), the manufacturer of heavy machinery Caterpillar ($4.5 billion), machine-building company Deere & Co, which produces agricultural machinery ($2 billion), the manufacturer of detergents and disinfectants, as well as solutions for water purification Ecolab (almost $1.4 billion). Gates Foundation Trust also owns shares of retailer Walmart - for $1 billion.

In trading on Ma 18, Microsoft securities added about 0.3%, since the beginning of the year they are down more than 12%. In 2026, Microsoft securities lagged behind the market and other major U.S. technology companies amid a broader sell-off in the software sector, as well as - due to the risks to the AI business and competition from Google's Gemini chatbot and Anthropic's Claude.

Nevertheless, of the 61 analysts that monitor the company's stock, 58 advise buying Microsoft stock (Buy and Overweight ratings), while another three recommend holding it in a portfolio.

Last week, it was also revealed that billionaire Bill Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square had invested in Microsoft, taking advantage of the stock's decline.

Last year, Gates announced that he would be phasing out the Gates Foundation Trust over the next 20 years and plans to spend down all of the foundation's assets at the end of that period. "When I die, many different things will be said about me, but I am determined to make sure that they don't say 'he died rich' about me," the Microsoft founder noted. According to the latest Forbes data, Gates' fortune is estimated at $102.9 billion.

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