Anonymous winner pays $9 million for Buffett-Curry lunch charity auction
An anonymous bidder paid $9,000,100 for a private lunch with Warren Buffett and Stephen Curry in a charity auction on eBay that ended Thursday night, according to the Associated Press. The winner will meet Buffett and the basketball star next month in Omaha, Nebraska, where Buffett’s longtime philanthropy-linked auction will again pair the worlds of finance and professional sports for a charitable cause.
The auction was structured to benefit two organizations: Buffett’s preferred charity and the Currys’ selected charity tied to Curry’s work off the court. Buffett also promised to match the winning bid, the AP reported, so that both charities would receive the proceeds from the auction and the investor’s additional contribution.
Curry and his wife, Ayesha, said they were grateful for the chance to participate in the auction, emphasizing how “different generations and institutions” could come together with the goal of helping people who need support “the most.” The AP included the couple’s statement when describing how the auction’s proceeds would flow to their foundation.
The eBay auction, as described by the AP, sought to revive a program Buffett had hosted for more than two decades. The event had raised $53 million for the GLIDE Foundation homeless charity in San Francisco before a pandemic pause disrupted the schedule, and it returned this year with a new lineup that included Curry.
The AP said the anonymous winner paid $9,000,100 to secure the private lunch next month. It also noted that the Buffett charity auctions had started in 2000 and that winning bids for a lunch with Buffett topped $1 million beginning in 2008.
In 2022, the AP reported that someone paid $19 million for a Buffett lunch, after which Buffett discontinued the event. A follow-up charity auction in 2024 raised $1.5 million for a lunch with software titan Marc Benioff, but that version did not continue.
The AP reported that Buffett reached out to the Currys earlier this year to ask them to join the lunch auction. Curry missed 27 games during the season before returning to help the Golden State Warriors down the stretch, the AP said, linking the timing of his participation to the team’s late-season push.
Buffett, who stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway in January after six decades leading the conglomerate, will not be leading the event from a stage. The AP said he sat through his first annual shareholder meeting after the change with Buffett in the audience rather than serving as the featured leader.