Bill Gates gave away shares worth $6 billion this week but is still the world's fifth-richest person

• Bill Gates gave shares worth $6 billion this week to his charitable foundation.
• The philanthropist pledged last week to give away $20 billion to the foundation this month.

Bill Gates is still the world's fifth-richest person, according to Bloomberg and Forbes rankings, despite giving away shares worth more than $6 billion this week to his charitable foundation.

Gates donated close to $5.2 billion worth of stock in Canadian National Railway Co to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SEC filings show.

The Microsoft co-founder also gave away $995 million worth of shares in Deere & Co. to the foundation on Thursday, filings from Friday show.

More than 3 million shares were moved from Gates' investment vehicle, Cascade Investment LLC, to the private non-profit organization.

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Gates is now worth $112 billion, according to Bloomberg, behind Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and India's Gautam Adani.

The philanthropist last week pledged in a Twitter thread to give $20 billion to the charitable foundation this month and plans to give away "virtually all" of his wealth to it in the future.

"I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world's richest people," Gates said last week in a tweet.

The foundation announced a commitment earlier this month to increase its annual donations to $9 billion by 2026.

The recent pledge and donations takes the foundation's endowment to around $70 billion, its website says, including a $3.1 billion annual donation from Warren Buffett.

"I have an obligation to return my resources to society in ways that have the greatest impact for reducing suffering and improving lives," Gates said in the Twitter thread last week. "And I hope others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too."

Melinda French Gates could step down as co-chair in a year if she and her former husband can no longer work together, the foundation said last year.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was not available for comment.