$ cat ./records/gates-sells-corbis-and-the-bettmann-archive-to-chinas-visual-chin-2016.txt
Gates Sells Corbis and the Bettmann Archive to China's Visual China Group
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In January 2016, Bill Gates sold Corbis — the image-licensing company he founded in 1989, home to the 16-million-image Bettmann Archive and the Sygma collection — to Unity Glory, an affiliate of China's Visual China Group (VCG). VCG, sometimes called 'China's Getty,' took control of the vast trove of Western historical photographs, while Getty Images was tapped to license the collection everywhere except China. The deal ended a decades-long rivalry with Getty and drew some unease about a major archive of 20th-century Western imagery passing to a Chinese company.
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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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