Today's age is the information age. If you have a smartphone and an internet connection, you can look up vast amounts of information sufficient to form an informed opinion on a variety of topics. One such topic is global wealth, and one of the most well known billionaires ever since the growth of the internet is Bill Gates.
Mr. Gates, responsible for setting up one of the world's largest technology companies, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), has dominated the global rich list for several years. Bill Gates was the first person in human history to cross $100 billion in total worth, during the peak of the dotcom era as Microsoft's shares boomed during the peak of the bubble. Mr. Gates first made it on Forbes' billionaire list in 1987 and became the world's richest person in 1995. This kicked off a period of dominance by Mr. Gates, as he maintained that spot until 2008 when he lost the title to the Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim. This would be a short lived victory for Mr. Slim, as the Microsoft billionaire would retake the top spot a year later and maintain the position until 2010 to lose the title once again for three years and regain it in 2017. Gates only lost the richest person title after he donated $55 billion of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. Safe to say, for Mr. Gates, being the world's richest person is as normal as filing taxes for the rest of us.
These days, Bill Gates is the sixth richest person in the world, and by our estimates, he really couldn't care less. His net worth, according to Forbes Magazine, is $114 billion, and according to the magazine's estimates, $30 billion of this fortune is held in cash. Quite a sizeable bank balance, we'd say. While the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the best known investment vehicles for Mr. Gates, the billionaire also runs his family office called Cascade Investment. Cascade is also managed by the Gates Foundation's manager Michael Larson. Mr. Gates is the only owner of Cascade, and the firm's SEC filings reveal investments in a variety of firms such as AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE:AZO), Ecolab Inc. (NYSE:ECL), Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI), and Deere & Company (NYSE:DE).
The foundation of Bill Gates' wealth is built on software. His firm Microsoft is the largest company in the world in terms of market share of the personal computing operating systems market. He has seen the computing industry since its inception, and naturally, this provides him with a unique perspective and insight into the industry. Given the current hype surrounding artificial intelligence, it's relevant to see his take on the matter. Fortunately for us, Mr. Gates shared his thoughts on the matter in March 2023 Microsoft podcast where he outlined:
A.I. has always been the holy grail of computer science. And, when I was young, Stanford Research had Shaky the Robot that was trying to pick things up. There were various logic systems that people were working on. You know so the dream was always some sort of reasoning capability. Overall progress in A.I., until machine learning came along, So was pretty modest. Even speech recognition was just barely reasonable. So we had that gigantic acceleration with machine learning particularly in sort of sensory things, recognizing speech, recognizing pictures. And it was phenomenal. And it just, you know kept getting better and scale was part of that. But we were still missing anything that had to do with complex logic. With being able to say read a text, and do what a human does, which is quote and understand what's in that text. And so as Microsoft was doing more with Open AI, I had a chance to go see them myself independently a number of times. They were doing a lot of text generation, they had a robot arm. The early text generation still didn't seem to have a broad understanding, you know like it could generate a sentence saying Joe's in Chicago, and then two sentences later say Joe's in Seattle which its local probabilistic sense was a good sentence but a human has a broad understanding of the world from both experience and reading. That you understand, that can't be. So they were enthusing about GPT-3 and even the early versions of GPT-4, I said to them, 'hey, if you can pass an advanced placement biology exam, where you take a question that's not part of the training set, or a bunch of them, and give fully reasoned answers knowing that biology textbook is one of many things that's in that training corps, then you will really get my attention because that would be a heck of a milestone. So, you know, please work on that.' I thought you know that would, they'd go away for two or three years. Because my intuition has always been we needed to understand knowledge representation and symbolic reasoning in a more explicit way. So that we were one or two inventions short of something where it was very good at reading and writing. And therefore being an assistant and so it was amazing that [they] over the summer were saying, yeah it might not be that long before we're going to come demo this thing to you because it's actually doing pretty well on scientific learning.
So, with these details in mind, let's take a look at Bill Gates' top stock picks for 2023 out of which the biggest stakes are in Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
Bill Gates' Most Recent Portfolio: Top 15 Stock Picks
Our Methodology
For this article we scanned the Q1'2023 portfolio of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and picked the top 15 stocks in terms of stake value.
Bill Gates' Most Recent Portfolio: Top 15 Stock Picks
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $143 million
United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) is a freight and logistics company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The firm provides land, air, and ocean freight transportation services all over the world.
By the end of last year's fourth quarter, 36 of the 943 hedge funds profiled by Insider Monkey had held a stake in United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS). The firm's second largest hedge fund investor in Q1 2023 was Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson's hedge fund with an $81 million stake.
Along with Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A), Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) is a top Bill Gates stock pick.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $147 million
Coupang, Inc. (NYSE:CPNG) is an internet retailer based in Seattle, Washington. The firm primarily focuses on the South Korean market, but it also has operations in the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, and other countries.
Insider Monkey dug through 943 hedge fund portfolios for their December quarter of 2022 investments and found that 49 had bought the firm's shares. Its largest investor is Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital with a $1.1 billion investment.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $183 million
Schrödinger, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDGR) is a software company operating out of New York. The firm focuses on the healthcare industry and provides a platform enabling drug discovery and development.
21 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey's database had bought Schrödinger, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDGR)'s shares during 2022's final quarter. Catherine D. Wood's ARK Investment Management was its second largest shareholder as of March 2023 through owning 3.9 million shares worth $102 million.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $190 million
Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI) is a real estate investment trust. It owns a portfolio of telecommunications properties and is based in Houston, Texas.
By the end of 2022's fourth quarter, 51 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey's database had invested in the REIT. Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI)'s largest investor is Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management with a $624 million stake.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $298 million
Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN), as the name suggests, is a waste management company. Based in Canada, it provides waste collection, disposal, and other services.
39 of the 943 hedge funds surveyed by Insider Monkey had held a stake in Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) as of December 2022. As of March 2023, its largest hedge fund investor was Henry Ellenbogen's Durable Capital Partners since it owns 2.2 million shares worth $306 million.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $350 million
FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) is a courier and logistics firm. It ships packages and freight all over the world and is based in Memphis, Tennessee.
By the end of 2022's final quarter, 48 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey's database had invested in the firm. FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX)'s largest shareholder is Ken Griffin's Citadel Investment Group with a $467 million stake.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $445 million
Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is a retailer that operates several facilities such as superstores and hypermarkets. It operates out of Bentonville, Arkansas.
Insider Monkey dug through 943 hedge fund portfolios and found out that 66 had bought Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT)'s shares during Q4 2022. During the first quarter of this year, the retailer's largest investor was Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management with a $1.2 billion investment.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $500 million
Coca-Cola FEMSA, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:KOF) is the Mexican bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola's beverages. It is based in Mexico City, Mexico.
As of 2022's final quarter, 12 of the 943 hedge funds surveyed by Insider Monkey had held a stake in the firm. Coca-Cola FEMSA, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:KOF)'s largest hedge fund investor after the Gates Foundation is Jim Simons' Renaissance Technologies with an $88 million stake.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $863 million
Ecolab Inc. (NYSE:ECL) is an industrial firm based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It provides water treatment, waste management, pest control and other products and services.
47 of the 943 hedge funds profiled by Insider Monkey had bought the chemical firm's shares by the end of December 2022. As of March 2023, Ecolab Inc. (NYSE:ECL)'s second largest investor in our database is William Von Mueffling's Cantillon Capital Management since it owns 1.7 million shares worth $283 million.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Q1 2023 Stake: $1.6 billion
Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) is a farming equipment manufacturer. It makes and sells tractors, pickers, harvesters, and other machines.
After scouring 943 hedge funds for their Q4 2022 shareholdings, 63 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey's database had bought Deere & Company (NYSE:DE)'s shares. The firm's largest hedge fund shareholder after the Gates Foundation is Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management with a $399 million investment.
Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI), Deere & Company (NYSE:DE), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).are some of Bill Gates' biggest investments.
