John Locher/AP
- Michael Dell recently gifted $350 million worth of Dell Technologies stock to good causes.
- The multibillionaire gave the shares to his family foundation and other charitable funds he advises.
- Dell is set to receive over $20 billion in stock and cash when Broadcom buys VMware this month.
Michael Dell, the multibillionaire founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, recently gave about $350 million worth of his stock to good causes. It was his first donation of Dell shares since 2006, and his biggest gift of the company's stock ever, Forbes reported.
Dell gifted 5.15 million shares between October 13 and October 19, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. He handed 2 million shares, or nearly 40% of the total amount, to the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The rest went to charitable funds established and advised by the personal-computing pioneer and his wife.
The gift is small relative to Dell's estimated net worth of $64 billion, which ranks him as the world's 18th-richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, the entrepreneur and his spouse are still among the biggest philanthropists in America; they placed 16th on Forbes' list of the country's most generous givers in January with an estimated $2.4 billion of lifetime donations.
Dell, 58, may have felt especially comfortable parting with the stock because he's poised to enjoy a big windfall soon. He owns nearly 40% of VMWare, a cloud-computing business that's set to be sold to microchip giant Broadcom later this month. Dell is slated to receive over $20 billion in Broadcom stock and cash in exchange for his stake, filings show.
The personal-computing pioneer's fortune has already rebounded by $16 billion this year, per Bloomberg's index. That's largely thanks to Dell Technologies stock surging by 63% since the start of January. The PC maker has benefited from the artificial-intelligence boom, which has boosted shares of many tech companies including Microsoft and Nvidia.