Gates Foundation sells remaining Microsoft stake

The Gates Foundation Trust’s latest U.S. securities filing shows Microsoft is no longer in the portfolio. A Form 13F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 15 for the quarter ended March 31 listed 22 holdings worth about $31.7 billion and did not include Microsoft. The absence confirms the trust sold its remaining Microsoft stake during the first quarter, based on a comparison with the prior filing for Dec. 31, which still showed Microsoft among its top holdings. The disclosure gave the market a dated snapshot rather than a same-day trade report. Form 13F filings show long U.S. equity holdings at quarter-end and are filed up to 45 days after the quarter closes, according to SEC guidance. That means the May 15 filing established that the position was gone as of March 31; it did not say on what day in the quarter the final shares were sold or at what price. (13f.info) ### Did the foundation actually “sell yesterday”? May 15 was the filing date, not necessarily the sale date. The social-media post that circulated on May 15 referred to the disclosure after the SEC filing became public, but the filing itself covered holdings as of March 31. The official record therefore supports that the trust had exited Microsoft by the end of the first quarter, not that it necessarily sold the stake on May 15. (sec.gov) The SEC filing is the key document here because no separate Form 4 or other insider-trading filing was cited in the post. The trust files as an institutional investment manager, and its 13F reports are the public source for these quarter-end holdings. ### How much Microsoft did the trust still own before this filing? (13f.info) The Dec. 31 filing showed Microsoft remained in the portfolio at the end of 2025. Third-party compilations of the filing data show the Gates Foundation Trust had 23 holdings worth about $35.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, with Microsoft still listed among the top positions. The first-quarter filing, posted May 15, showed 22 holdings worth about $31.7 billion and no Microsoft position. (sec.gov) Public filing histories also show this was the end of a longer drawdown rather than a one-quarter exit from a full-sized position. The trust’s Microsoft stake appeared in multiple quarterly filings through 2024 and 2025, and outside analyses of those filings reported sharp reductions during 2025 before the position disappeared in the March 31, 2026 report. (13f.info) ### What number matters most in this filing? The cleanest reported number is the portfolio total. The Gates Foundation Trust reported about $31.7 billion in 13F holdings for the first quarter, down from about $35.4 billion in the prior quarter, according to the filing history. Those figures reflect quarter-end market values for the disclosed U.S.-listed holdings, not the trust’s entire asset base. (13f.info) Some market reports estimated the remaining Microsoft position at roughly 7.7 million shares, worth about $3.2 billion at recent prices, but that figure came from secondary reports rather than the SEC filing excerpt itself. The filing record available publicly through the SEC and filing trackers is enough to establish the exit without relying on that estimate. (13f.info) ### Why has the trust been cutting holdings at all? Bill Gates said in May 2025 that he would give away virtually all of his wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years, and the foundation said it would spend $200 billion over that period before closing on Dec. 31, 2045. In January 2026, the foundation said its board had endorsed a $9 billion annual payout. Those announcements do not say Microsoft was sold for any single stated reason, but they set out a broader spend-down plan and a faster timetable for deploying capital. (stocktwits.com) Mark Suzman, the foundation’s chief executive, reiterated in the 2026 annual letter that the organization is working toward its 2045 closure. The foundation has framed that timetable as part of a larger push to direct more money to programs over the next two decades. ### What should readers watch next? (gatesfoundation.org) The next formal checkpoint is the Gates Foundation Trust’s second-quarter Form 13F. SEC rules generally require the filing within 45 days of quarter-end, which would put the next deadline in mid-August 2026. That filing will show what replaced Microsoft, if anything, among the trust’s disclosed U.S. equity holdings. (sec.gov) (gatesfoundation.org)