- Warren Buffett has surpassed Bill Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
- The Berkshire Hathaway CEO is up an unmatched $18.7 billion this year to $161 billion.
- Buffett has consistently trailed Gates since the rich list was launched in 2012.
Warren Buffett has overtaken Bill Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after adding an unmatched $18.7 billion to his net worth this year.
The Berkshire Hathaway CEO has climbed to sixth place on the list with a $161 billion fortune, $1 billion more than Gates. He's also the biggest wealth gainer of 2025 so far — outpacing a $17 billion rise by TikTok investor Jeff Yass.
Buffett has consistently trailed Gates on the rich list. When the Microsoft cofounder's net worth dipped below $110 billion during a market slump in October 2022, Buffett was worth less than $100 billion.
Similarly, during the pandemic-driven crash in March 2020, Gates' wealth dipped below $95 billion but Buffett was under $65 billion.
Even when Buffett surged to $130 billion in March 2022, Gates still had a slight edge at about $135 billion.
The earliest entries on Bloomberg's list, which began in March 2012, show Gates at $63 billion and Buffett at $44 billion.
Buffett's gain, Gates' pain
Buffett's gain this year reflects a 13% rise in Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares this year, while an 8% decline in Microsoft stock has limited Gates' wealth increase to $1.3 billion.
The Trump administration's policies have reignited inflation and recession fears, spurring investors to sell riskier technology stocks and reconsider more conservatively valued stocks such as Berkshire.
Berkshire Hathaway nearly doubled its stockpile of cash, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets to $334 billion last year. It sold a net $134 billion worth of stocks and spent less than $3 billion on share buybacks, halting repurchases entirely in the second half of the year.
Buffett may be ahead now but he's historically trailed Gates in wealth rankings. Gates topped Forbes' annual list of the 400 richest Americans on 25 occasions, including a 24-year streak from 1994 to 2017. Buffett, in contrast, has only ranked first once, in 1993.
Giving it away
Since 2006, Buffett has donated about 57% of the Berkshire shares that make up virtually all of his personal wealth — primarily to four of his family's foundations and the Gates Foundation.
Those shares would be worth $207 billion based on Berkshire's stock price at Friday's close. If Buffett had retained those shares and all else being equal, he'd be the world's richest person with a fortune in excess of $360 billion, comfortably surpassing Elon Musk's $320 billion net worth.
Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, have given away nearly $60 billion to their foundation through 2023.
Regulatory disclosures show that Gates owned about 1.3% of Microsoft before stepping down as director in 2020. Most of his wealth is now held in Cascade Investment, a holding company he funded with Microsoft stock sales and dividends.
Musk remains comfortably the world's richest person, with a roughly $102 billion lead over second-place Jeff Bezos, despite being the biggest wealth loser this year with a $112 billion decline.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is just $4 billion behind in third spot, worth $214 billion, following a $7.2 billion increase this year.
