Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a stockbroker who later became a US congressman. He showed an early aptitude for business, selling chewing gum and delivering newspapers as a child and buying his first stock at age 11. He later studied under value-investing pioneer Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School, a relationship that shaped his entire investment philosophy.

As a teenager, Buffett also ran a small pinball-machine business with a friend, placing machines in Washington, D.C.-area barbershops — an early, if modest, example of the capital-allocation instincts that would define his career.

Buffett began running investment partnerships in the 1950s and 1960s, building a strong early track record. In 1965, he took control of Berkshire Hathaway, then a struggling New England textile manufacturer, and over the following decades transformed it into a sprawling holding company, becoming famous for his folksy annual shareholder letters and disciplined, long-term approach to investing.

His early investment partnerships returned well above the broader stock market for over a decade, and by the time he wound them down in 1969 to focus fully on Berkshire, Buffett was already a wealthy man by most standards — though a small fraction of what he would ultimately amass over the following half-century.

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Under Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway grew into one of the largest companies in the world through major acquisitions including GEICO, See’s Candies, BNSF Railway, and Dairy Queen, alongside a massive public equities portfolio that has included Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express, and Bank of America. He served as Chairman and CEO for roughly six decades before formally retiring as CEO on December 31, 2025, handing the role to longtime deputy Greg Abel while remaining Chairman of the Board.

Buffett announced the succession plan at Berkshire’s May 2025 annual shareholder meeting, and the transition was widely covered as the end of an era for corporate America, given that Buffett had run the company since before most of its current shareholders were born.

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Unlike most people covered on this site, Buffett’s wealth is not driven by an annual salary. He famously kept his official Berkshire compensation at just $100,000 per year for decades, with his fortune instead growing almost entirely through the appreciation of his personal Berkshire Hathaway shareholding.

Berkshire’s board has repeatedly kept Buffett’s official pay minimal, a deliberate reflection of his view that his wealth should come from long-term shareholder value creation rather than executive compensation. His successor, Greg Abel, has a very different pay package as incoming CEO, structured with a market-rate salary and performance incentives more typical of large public companies.

Buffett has occasionally lent his name and image to marketing campaigns for companies Berkshire owns or has invested in, including GEICO, but he has never relied on commercial endorsements as a source of wealth. Virtually all of his fortune traces back to Berkshire Hathaway equity built up over decades.

Berkshire Hathaway owns dozens of subsidiaries outright across insurance, railroads, energy, retail, and manufacturing, alongside a public stock portfolio worth hundreds of billions of dollars. By mid-2026, Berkshire was reported to be holding roughly $397.4 billion in cash, one of the largest corporate cash reserves in history.

Buffett has famously lived in the same modest house in Omaha, purchased in 1958 for roughly $31,500, for his entire adult life — a detail frequently cited as emblematic of his famously frugal personal habits despite being one of the richest people on Earth.