Bill Gates Just Dumped 65% of His Microsoft Stock. Should You Sell?

• The Gates Foundation Trust sold 65% of its Microsoft (MSFT) involvement successful Q3, reducing the presumption from $13.9B to $4.76B.

• Microsoft dropped to the fourth-largest holding successful the Gates Foundation Trust portfolio down Berkshire Hathaway astatine $10.9B.

• The merchantability appears driven by portfolio rebalancing and liquidity needs arsenic the instauration plans to summation yearly grants to $9B by 2026.

• If you’re reasoning astir retiring oregon cognize idiosyncratic who is, determination are 3 speedy questions causing galore Americans to recognize they tin discontinue earlier than expected. instrumentality 5 minutes to larn much here

Microsoft co-founder (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bill Gates erstwhile held the immense bulk of his idiosyncratic wealthiness successful the company's shares. Over decades, helium gradually reduced his nonstop ownership done income and monolithic donations to philanthropy.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust -- present called the Gates Foundation Trust aft his ex-wife resigned from the enactment -- agelong maintained Microsoft arsenic its largest holding, a bequest of Gates' ongoing banal gifts. One twelvemonth ago, the holdings were valued astatine astir $14 cardinal and represented one-third of the total.

Yet successful its 3rd 4th 13F-HR filing, the Trust revealed it sold astir 17 cardinal shares, slashing its Microsoft presumption by astir 65%. The stock, antecedently valued astatine astir $13.9 billion, dropped to astir $4.76 billion. Microsoft present ranks lone 4th successful the portfolio, trailing Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A)(NYSE:BRK-B) astatine $10.9 billion, Waste Management (NYSE:WM), and Canadian National Railway (NYSE:CNI).

But if the company's founder's instauration is dumping banal connected this scale, adjacent though Gates stepped distant from operations years ago, does that awesome it's clip for you to merchantability too?

Microsoft has evolved acold beyond its roots arsenic a idiosyncratic machine bundle giant. Under CEO Satya Nadella, the institution pivoted aggressively into unreality computing with Azure and positioned itself arsenic a person successful artificial quality (AI) done its multibillion-dollar concern with OpenAI and the integration of Copilot tools crossed Office, GitHub, and Bing.

This translation paid disconnected handsomely for years, pushing MSFT to repeated all-time highs successful 2025. However, the banal has retreated astir 12% from its late-October highest adjacent $555 per share, trading contiguous astir $487 amid a broader rotation retired of high-valuation AI names. Fears of an "AI bubble" intensified recently, with bears similar Michael Burry highlighting monolithic capex without proportional returns yet.