Someone Just Paid Tens of Millions (4x the Former Record) to Have a Steak Lunch With Warren Buffett The anonymous bidder will have a private lunch with Buffett and up to seven guests at Smith & Wollensky in New York.
By Amanda Breen
How much would you pay for a private steak lunch with the Oracle of Omaha?
An anonymous bidder just forked over a record-breaking $19 million to dine with billionaire investor Warren Buffett as part of the 21st annual auction for a lunch with the Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO.
The Power of One Charity Auction Lunch began in 2000 and was created by Buffett's late wife, Susie. The event has been managed by eBay since 2003 and produced in partnership with the Glide Foundation, a San-Francisco-based nonprofit fighting poverty, hunger, and homelessness.
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On June 12, bidding began at $25,000, and by June 17, it closed with $19,000,100 from an anonymous bidder, per a news release from eBay. The massive winning bid is four times greater than 2019's winner — the last year the auction was held before being interrupted by the pandemic — which came in at $4,567,888. Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun was the winner that year.
The anonymous bidder will have a private lunch with Buffett and up to seven guests at Smith & Wollensky in New York.
The annual event has raised more than $53 million for Glide over the years, but this year's $19 million bid is a record that won't be broken, as this will be the final auctioned lunch with Buffett, now 91 years old.
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"It's been nothing but good," Buffett has said of the lunch in the past, per the eBay news release. "I've met a lot of interesting people from all over the world. The one universal characteristic is that they feel the money is going to be put to very good uses."
