A bid to eat lunch privately with billionaire investor Warren Buffett has already reached $1 million.
Related: What you need to know from Warren Buffett's Berkshire meeting
The goal of the 86-year-old's annual high-profile luncheon is to benefit the Glide Foundation, a charity that helps homeless individuals in San Francisco. Over the past 17 years, the business magnate has raised nearly $24 million for the organization.
The eBay auction launched on Sunday night and runs through Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. Within just seconds after it opened, the cost of lunch reached $1 million. As of Tuesday afternoon, that bid remained as the top amount, with a few hundred dollars tacked on to the original. (The opening bid is set at $25,000.) But the largest bids typically come near the end of the week.
Business professionals from around the world bid each year for a chance to dine with Buffett. The winner can bring as many as seven guests to dine with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York City. The event is in its 18th year.
Previous winners include Singaporean businessman Andy Chua, who paid $2.2 million in 2014, and Chinese gaming company Da Lian Zeus Entertainment, which paid $2.35 million in 2015, according to CNN Money. In 2016, the guest was an anonymous woman who spent $3.4 million, Fortune reported, an amount that tied the record set by an anonymous bidder in 2012.
The ending bidding moments for the 2016 luncheon happened as the Golden State Warriors played the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA championship, as the San Francisco Business Times pointed out. Bidders added hundreds of dollars to the $2.8 million price level in the final half of the auction last year. The same basketball matchup is happening this week, with a game scheduled to begin shortly before the close of the auction Friday.
Buffett is the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway. He is also a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign. In August, he challenged then-candidate Donald Trump to release his tax returns, but the president says he won't release his returns until the Internal Revenue Service has completed an audit.
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Michele Gorman is a Newsweek political reporter, with a focus on gun policy. She previously worked at msnbc.com, where she ... Read more
