Bill Gates, a billionaire who just pledged to donate his money to his humanitarian foundation, has donated $6 billion this week in an effort to dethrone himself off the list of the world’s richest people. The co-founder of Microsoft recently made a commitment to contribute all of his fortunes “virtually.” As part of that commitment, he promised to pay $20 billion to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this month.
The documents of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that Gates gave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shares of the Canadian National Railway Company valued at over $5.2 billion. His papers from Friday, July 22, also disclosed that he went ahead and gave the foundation shares in Deere & Co., valued at $995 million.
Gates, 66, is still the fifth-richest person in the world despite this week’s donation of shares to his philanthropic foundation totalling more than $6 billion. According to Bloomberg, Bill Gates currently ranks fifth in fortune, behind Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, and Gautam Adani, with $112 billion in assets.
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Bill Gates claimed that he is doing this to ‘move down’ the Forbes Rich List while declaring that he is giving away all of his riches. He posted on Twitter, saying: “As I look to the future, I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation. I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world’s richest people.”
He stated in another tweet, “I have an obligation to return my resources to society in ways that have the greatest impact for reducing suffering and improving lives. And I hope others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too.”
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Forbes claims that Bill and Melinda Gates are now the “greatest philanthropists of all time” after their most recent $20 billion donation raised their total lifetime donations to $55 billion. With this, they have outdone Warren Buffet, who has donated $48 billion to charity in total. Notably, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation received the majority of Buffet’s charitable donations.
