Bill Gates’ $200 billion moonshot

Foreword

Good morning,

There are three big thoughts on my radar this week.

1. Who is Greg Abel? Warren Buffett has announced an end to his tenure as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (No. 5). His successor, Greg Abel, has been with the firm a long time and will run it much differently than Buffett. Shawn Tully wrote the most extensive profile of Abel to date in our February/March issue. Here’s his assessment of Abel’s management style as Buffett prepares to pass the torch.

2. The legacy of Bill Gates is cemented. Bill Gates made a major philanthropic announcement this week: Gates will distribute nearly all his wealth to the Gates Foundation—about $100 billion. The Gates Foundation will spend all of that, plus what's already in its coffers, over the next 20 years, hoping to eradicate four or five diseases from the planet altogether. But after that, the foundation will cease to exist. In exclusive interviews with Fortune, Gates delved deep into the rationale behind this momentous decision; over the course of 10 months, the foundation also gave Fortune an in-depth look behind the scenes, including a visit to its life-saving South African operations.

This is a major announcement on a number of fronts, but what I admire most about Gates' decision is his determination to use his power and wealth for good. At the end of the day, he will be better known as a philanthropist who helped millions of people than as the founder of Microsoft (No. 13). That's pretty admirable. As Melinda French Gates told Fortune, "If you're a billionaire in the United States, you benefited from this country. We owe something back to society."

3. The clock is ticking for Google. For the first time, there may be signs that search share is being taken away from traditional offerings and being redistributed to gen AI tools. Testifying on Google's behalf earlier this week in an ongoing antitrust trial, Eddy Cue of Apple (No. 3) (which has had a long, fruitful relationship with Google as the iPhone's default search engine) let slip that Safari queries—which rely on Google—dropped for the first time last month. But the story is more complicated, Fortune AI Editor Jeremy Kahn writes , painting a nuanced picture of an ever-competitive landscape where not just gen AI platforms, but even TikTok competes for search market share (and associated ad revenue). Meanwhile, Google’s own AI Overviews, designed to keep up with competition, impact paid clicks from its traditional search. Search contributes about $50 billion a quarter in revenue for Google, so there could be a real moment of reckoning ahead as habits change.

To go deeper on all of the above, you really should subscribe to Fortune. Our next magazine cover will be the inside story on how Gates made the $200 billion decision to close up shop. More of the best from Fortune this week is below.

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