Great Moments In Brewing – Bill Gates Makes $95M Bet On Bud Light Beer

In September of 2023, Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder and one of the world’s richest men, made a $95M on Bud Light, a brand that was still reeling from its short-lived relationship with Trans activist, Dylan Mulvaney.

According to financial data firm TipRanks, Bill Gates made a $95 million bet in Bud Light, purchasing 1.7 million shares of Anheuser-Busch which is home to the embattled beer brand.

The 67-year-old billionaire, who founded Microsoft in 1975, bought up the shares via his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust during the second quarter of 2023.

Anheuser-Busch was still reeling from its short-lived relationship with Trans activist, Dylan Mulvaney at the time,  which ignited an explosive backlash that ended in disaster.

Bud Light’s decision to showcase the Trans Tik Tok influencer on a special can spurred a Boycott Bud Light! online campaign, a video of Kid Rock shooting up a bunch of bud light beer cans that went viral, and a huge surge in online interest in the Samuel Adams Beer.

The initial Dylan Mulvaney announcement took place on April 1, 2023 and in spite of Anheuser-Busch’s desperate efforts to put the matter to bed the brand continues to struggle with the impact of that decision.

After 22 years as the nation’s #1 beer, Bud Light was dethroned by Modelo Especial, a Mexican beer brand that’s part of the Anheuser-Busch family everywhere in the world except in the US, where it brewed south of the border by Constellation Brands who sell it in the states.

“Anheuser-Busch’s share price has slipped nearly 9% over the past six months, and it’s down over 3%, to $56.08, in the past five days,” reported the New York Post in 2023, “a result of a national boycott of Bud Light that has shown no signs of slowing down.”

Clearly Bill Gates was betting big that Bud Light and its producer Anheuser-Busch  were set for a rebound and his $95 million investment in the Belgian-based global brewer spoke to that.

This was not Gates first foray into big beer investments.

In 2023 Gates, the richest man in the world for 15 consecutive years from 1995 to 2010, and again from 2013 to 2017, purchased a $904 million stake in Heineken, despite admitting in the past he is “not a big beer drinker”.

“When I end up at something like a baseball game, I drink light beer to get with the vibe of all the other beer drinkers, he said in a 2018 interview with Reddit. ‘Sorry to disappoint real beer drinkers.”

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(Bill Gates landing page photo: Wikipedia)