Warren Buffett is 95. Here’s a look at the legendary investor’s remarkable life as he prepares to step down as CEO.

It’s Warren Buffett’s 95th birthday, his last as Berkshire Hathaway CEO.

When he steps down in December, it will mark the end of an era that saw the legendary investor transform a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion conglomerate over six decades.

Here’s a look back at Buffett’s remarkable life.

Born to do business

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 30, 1930, at the height of the Great Depression. He was the second of three children and the only son of Howard, a stockbroker and later a congressman, and Leila, a homemaker.

The investor started his business career at six, selling Juicy Fruit chewing gum door to door. He later resold individual bottles of Coca-Cola from a pack, delivered newspapers, and built up a pinball machine business, which he later sold.

Buffett was 11 when he bought his first stock, Cities Service Preferred, and filed his first tax return at 13. He bought a farm at 14 and rented it to a tenant farmer.

When he was 16, he had amassed $5,000, around $53,000 in today’s money.

Learning from the best

Buffett majored in business at Wharton before transferring to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and graduating in 1950, at the age of 19.

Around that time, he read Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor, “which introduced him to the key tenets of value investing, such as buying stocks so cheap that they provide a “margin of safety.”

Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning Graham taught there. After Columbia, he worked for his father’s company for a year before joining Graham’s investment firm, where he received a masterclass in analyzing companies and identifying undervalued stocks.

In 1952, at age 22, he married a college student, Susan Thompson, and the pair had their first child, Susan or “Little Susie,” in 1953. He began teaching night classes on investing and inviting family and friends to invest their money with him. In 1956, as Graham prepared to retire, Buffett moved back to Omaha and prepared to launch his firm, Buffett Partnership.

Buying and building

Buffett embraced Graham’s trademark “cigar butt” approach of sniffing out cheap stocks with “one last puff” of value, such as Sanborn Map Company and Dempster Mill Manufacturing. His partnership’s assets grew from about $100,000 to $20 million as his outperformance attracted more investors and his returns compounded.

He and his wife had their second child, Howard, in 1954, and their third, Peter, in 1958. Buffett also met Charlie Munger in 1959, who encouraged him to shift from buying dirt-cheap businesses to “wonderful companies at fair prices.”

In 1962, Buffett began acquiring shares of Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile mill. He seized control of the company in 1965 after its management agreed to buy him out, then tried to shortchange him.

Buffett Partnership also invested in American Express after its stock plunged during the Salad Oil Scandal, and in Disney after Walt Disney gave Buffett a personal tour of Disneyland and sold the investor on his vision.

Partnerships, old and new

Buffett acquired insurers such as National Indemnity, paving the way for him to use “float” — premiums collected before claims are paid — as a source of low-cost, permanent capital for investing.

In 1969, the investor grew concerned about overvalued assets and a lack of compelling opportunities, so he decided to wind down his Buffett Partnership and return his partners’ money while retaining a significant stake in Berkshire. The firm’s assets had reached $104 million in 1970, reflecting, in part, a compounded annual return of 31% since 1956.

Buffett invested in the Illinois Bank and Trust Company in 1969, acquired See’s Candies in 1972, built a stake in the Washington Post Company, and bet on other businesses such as Blue Chip Stamps. Munger also became his formal business partner and joined Berkshire as vice-chair.

By age 45, Buffett’s wealth had grown to about $34 million, or roughly $200 million today.

Deals of a lifetime

Berkshire invested in car insurer Geico and other companies such as Capital Cities/ABC and Wesco Financial, as Buffett began seeking out businesses with “moats” or durable competitive advantages.

His wife moved to San Francisco in 1977 to pursue singing and activism. She introduced Buffett to a friend, Astrid Menks, who moved in with Buffett and took care of him, and whom Buffett would marry after Susan died in 2004.

In 1983, Berkshire acquired Nebraska Furniture Mart. In 1985, Buffett became a billionaire at age 55, appearing on the Forbes 400 list that year.

Status and scandals

Buffett’s yearly shareholder letters, colorful interviews, and annual shareholder gatherings made him a celebrity and earned him the moniker the “Oracle of Omaha.”

He had built a billion-dollar stake in Coca-Cola by 1989, drawn by its global brand, pricing power, and cash generation. He also invested in Gillette and established a stake in Wells Fargo.

Buffett met Bill Gates at a 4th of July event in 1991 and became fast friends with the Microsoft cofounder. He also stepped in as interim chairman of Salomon Brothers after a Treasury bond scandal threatened his investment in the bank. He delivered a message to employees in testimony to Congress in 1991: “Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”

Buffett’s buying spree

Berkshire acquired the other half of Geico for $2.3 billion in 1996, paid $22 billion of its stock to take over reinsurer General Re in 1998, and led an investor group to buy MidAmerican Energy in 1999.

Buffett capitalized on the dot-com crash, scooping up Benjamin Moore in 2000, Shaw Carpets in 2001, Fruit of the Loom and Pampered Chef in 2002, and Clayton Homes in 2003.

Capitalizing on crisis

After Susan’s death in 2004, Buffett made philanthropy a greater priority. In 2006, he pledged the vast majority of his Berkshire stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four of his family’s foundations, foreshadowing his cofounding of the Giving Pledge in 2010.

Buffett continued to make acquisitions, including Iscar, an Israeli precision toolmaker, in 2006, and Marmon, an industrial conglomerate, in 2007. He also acquired BNSF Railway for $34 billion in 2010: Berkshire’s largest acquisition up to that point.

During the financial crisis, Berkshire’s cash reserves, risk management, and willingness to “be greedy when others are fearful” led to a flurry of lucrative deals with Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Mars, Harley-Davidson, and other companies.

Buffett hired Todd Combs in 2010 and Ted Weschler in 2011 as investment managers to help him oversee Berkshire’s stock portfolio. A year later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent successful radiation treatment. He also gained public prominence for supporting a “Buffett Rule” that would close loopholes to prevent situations like his own, where his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.

Berkshire partnered with 3G Capital to acquire Heinz, which later became Kraft Heinz, for $23 billion in 2013.

Preparing for a new era

In 2015, Berkshire made its biggest deal yet when it shelled out $37 billion for Precision Castparts. Between 2016 and 2018, Berkshire spent around $36 billion to build a roughly 5% stake in Apple, which more than quadrupled in value to above $170 billion by 2023, making it easily Berkshire’s number-one holding and one of the most lucrative bets in its history. Berkshire has pared the position by two-thirds over the last few quarters.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Buffett to cash out his stakes in the “Big Four” US airlines. But he’s made several big bets since, such as buying Dominion Energy’s natural gas assets for $10 billion, purchasing stakes in five of the largest Japanese trading companies, and acquiring Alleghany for $12 billion, which added businesses such as Squishmallows-maker Jazwares to Berkshire’s stable.

Berkshire also paid more than $11 billion over about seven years to acquire Pilot Flying J, a truck-stop chain that had been one of the country’s biggest private companies.

Munger died in November 2023, a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday and still in the job. Berkshire’s market cap passed $1 trillion in late 2024.

The company’s shares gained 5,500,000% or nearly 20% a year between 1964 and 2024, far above the benchmark S&P 500’s roughly 39,000% or 10% annual return with dividends included over the same period.

Buffett had prepared his shareholders for his eventual departure, outlining his estate plan and naming Greg Abel, Berkshire’s head of non-insurance operations, as his successor in 2021.

But he still stunned the business world this May by saying he would step down later this year, and Abel would take the reins in early January.

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