$ cat ./records/gates-invests-275-million-in-ginkgo-bioworks-synthetic-biology-pl-2018.txt
Gates Invests $275 Million in Ginkgo Bioworks Synthetic Biology Platform
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Cascade Investment, Bill Gates's personal investment firm, committed $275 million to Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology platform company that designs and engineers microorganisms for industrial and agricultural applications. Among Ginkgo's agricultural programmes is a $100 million collaboration with Bayer to engineer microbes enabling staple crops including corn, wheat, and soybeans to fix their own atmospheric nitrogen — potentially disrupting the $250 billion global synthetic fertiliser market and dramatically reducing the land-use and emissions footprint of grain production.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/bill-gates-is-betting-on-this-synthetic-biology-start-up.html
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Related Accomplishments
2026
Gates Foundation Trust Sells Off the Last of Its Microsoft Stock
In the first quarter of 2026, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust sold its remaining Microsoft shares, fully exiting a position in the very company that created Gates's fortune — capping a long, deliberate diversification away from the stock. The endowment that funds Gates's philanthropy, managed separately from its grant-making through Cascade, is now anchored instead by Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, railroads, and heavy-equipment makers. The sale underscored how thoroughly Gates's giving had decoupled from Microsoft's day-to-day fortunes.
2026
Gates's Charitable Endowment Is Now Led by Berkshire, Not Microsoft
By 2026, the publicly disclosed stock portfolio of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust — the endowment that funds Gates's philanthropy — was led not by Microsoft but by Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, Canadian National Railway, Caterpillar, and Deere. Decades of diversification, plus Warren Buffett's stock gifts, left it concentrated in railroads, waste, heavy equipment, and Buffett's conglomerate, while Microsoft — the source of the original fortune — had largely been sold down. The unglamorous, value-oriented mix reflects the long stewardship of Gates's money manager, Michael Larson, through Cascade Investment.
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