Someone paid $9,000,100 to win a private lunch with Warren Buffett and Stephen Curry in an eBay charity auction that wrapped up Thursday night, with the investor also promising to match the winning bid so that both their chosen charities benefit. The anonymous winner will have the lunch next month in Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, with Buffett and the Currys’ families.
The auction was intended to revive an event Buffett had hosted for more than two decades, raising money for the GLIDE Foundation homeless charity in San Francisco and, this year, benefiting Curry’s Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation. Buffett and Curry were brought together for the fundraising effort after Buffett reached out earlier this year to ask the Currys to join the lunch auction.
In a statement, the Currys said they were “overwhelmed with gratitude for this opportunity, which reflects a shared belief that when different generations and institutions come together with purpose, we can create deeper and more lasting impact for the people who need it most.”
The eBay auction set the winning price at $9,000,100, and the deal also included Buffett’s pledge to match the winning amount, so the charitable contributions would scale with the final bid. The auction’s outcome meant that both GLIDE Foundation and Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation were positioned to receive the matched funds tied to the lunch award.
Buffett’s auctions began in 2000 and continued every year until the pandemic prompted a couple of years off. Starting in 2008, every winning bid for the lunch topped $1 million, according to the AP report.
Buffett discontinued the event after someone paid $19 million for a lunch in 2022. A separate follow-up auction in 2024 raised $1.5 million for a lunch with software executive Marc Benioff, but that version of the event did not continue.
At the time of the latest auction, Curry’s season had been interrupted by injuries; the report said he missed 27 games this year before returning to help the Golden State Warriors down the stretch.
Buffett also recently transitioned leadership at Berkshire Hathaway. He stepped down as CEO in January after six decades leading the conglomerate, remained chairman, and “just sat through his first annual shareholder meeting — sitting in the audience instead of leading the event from stage.”