Sia/LBG has been awarded a supplemental grant by the Gates Foundation to enhance its web-based cost and environmental impact modeling resource for pharmaceutical APIs Cost of Goods (COGs).
BALTIMORE, July 29, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– Sia/LBG (formerly Latham BioPharm Group), the Life Science and Healthcare Business Line of Sia, a next-generation, global management consulting group, has been awarded a supplemental grant by the Gates Foundation to enhance its web-based cost and environmental impact modeling resource for pharmaceutical APIs Cost of Goods (COGs). This funding builds on the initial grant award, where Sia/LBG developed a web-based tool that allows clients to harness data from multiple systems to save time and resources by optimizing and understanding pharmaceutical COGs analyses earlier in development.
The new features will include COGs analysis for Drug Product formulation, Device manufacturing, Fill, Finish, Packaging for tablets/sterile products/unique presentations, as well as market demand forecasting. These enhancements are designed to broaden the tool’s user base, ensuring it remains a sustainable product for the global health community while also supporting potential commercial users beyond the global health sector.
Building on this foundation, Sia/LBG will continue collaborating seamlessly with the different teams across Sia. New features will be integrated by leveraging Sia/LBG’s life sciences technical consulting expertise alongside Sia’s leading artificial intelligence solutions and customer experience expertise.
“Our team turned a complex life sciences COGs and climate impact model into a web-based app, streamlining costing and improving reproducibility, version control, and data management for teams performing modeling, says Chris Peterson, Sia/LBG’s Managing Director of Strategy & Management Consulting. “Customers using the web-based application have already seen a reduction in time to input data by 40% and a decrease in manual touchpoints, leading to a more consistent evaluation of COGs.”
This meaningful program and enhanced new capability and product offering is consistent with Sia/LBG’s strategic commitment to serve as a world leader in Life Sciences and Healthcare consulting, as well as Sia’s Consulting for Good initiative.
The team is actively seeking additional application adopters to provide feedback on how the modeling resource can be utilized in both global public health and commercial pharmaceutical decision-making across the product development spectrum. Stakeholders interested in contributing to this dialogue are encouraged to contact Chris Peterson at cpeterson@lathambiopharm.com.
Most investors have probably heard of Bill Gates, best known as a billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT).
After heading up the technology company he founded for more than 25 years, the former CEO stepped down to focus on his charity work. Gates is worth an estimated $132.6 billion (as of this writing), according to Forbes, making him the ninth richest person in the world. However, the fabled billionaire has pledged that “the vast majority of my wealth would go toward helping as many people as possible.”
The vehicle he uses to support that goal is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. “Our mission is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life,” the Gates Foundation website declares. The foundation has made grant payments of $77.6 billion since its inception, “taking on the toughest, most important problems.” As a result, holdings of the Trust tend to vary from quarter to quarter.
While the Trust continues to own stakes in more than two dozen companies, 83% of its portfolio was comprised of just four stocks at the close of the second quarter.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Microsoft: 33%
Of all the holdings in the Gates Trust, Microsoft is by far the largest. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Gates set up the foundation with his own holdings. The Trust owns roughly 35 million shares of Microsoft stock valued at $14.7 billion.
Yet this isn’t the Microsoft of old. The company has expanded beyond its browser and operating system software, with Azure Cloud becoming the fastest-growing cloud infrastructure provider. It’s up 29% year over year in the most recent quarter, outpacing both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alphabet‘s Google Cloud.
However, it was Microsoft’s early move into generative AI that has investors most excited. Management noted that Azure’s cloud growth included “eight points from AI services,” helping illustrate the upside. The company’s AI-powered digital assistant — Copilot — and other AI tools could generate incremental revenue of $143 billion by 2027, according to analysts at Evercore ISI.
The Trust also benefits from Microsoft’s quarterly dividend, which the company has paid out consistently since 2004 and increased every year since 2011. The current yield of 0.7% might seem inconsequential, but that’s a function of the impressive stock price gains of more than 200% over the past five years. Furthermore, with a payout ratio of less than 25%, there are likely many more dividend increases on the horizon.
2. Berkshire Hathaway: 21%
Fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B), has similar plans to donate the bulk of his wealth to charity. He joined Gates in the “Giving Pledge” in 2006 and has since donated roughly $43 billion to the Trust, including a bequest of $4 billion in June. As a result, the Gates Foundation currently holds nearly 25 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares worth $11 billion.
Given Berkshire’s portfolio of profitable businesses and successful stock holdings, it isn’t surprising that the Trust continues to keep so much of the stock on hand. The portfolio provides built-in diversification and is expected to rake in billions in dividend income over the coming year. Furthermore, Berkshire just pared down its stock holdings and boosted its cash pile to a record high. It’s now holding roughly $277 billion in cash.
Given the company’s history of success and massive cash pile, it isn’t surprising that it’s still one of the Trust’s largest holdings.
3. Waste Management: 16%
Gates has a soft spot for boring companies with strong recurring revenue, which is the very definition of Waste Management(NYSE: WM). If you have any doubt, consider this: The Gates Trust has a stake of more than 35 million shares of Waste Management stock worth $7.3 billion.
Beyond just trash collection, Waste Management owns a number of reclamation stations that recover glass, paper, metal, and plastics and redirect them for recycling. The company also operates a number of landfills where it collects landfill gases to generate electricity and power vehicles.
In the second quarter, revenue grew 5.5% year over year, while its adjusted operating EBITDA increased 10%.
Let’s not forget the dividend. Waste Management has increased its payout for 15 consecutive years, with a current yield of 1.43%. And with a payout ratio of 46%, there’s plenty more where that came from.
4. Canadian National Railway: 13%
Another area where Gates and Buffett share common ground is enduring faith in railroads. Buffett was clear when he bought out Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2009, saying that railroads transported goods “in a very cost-effective way… they do it in an extraordinarily environmentally friendly way… [releasing] far fewer pollutants into the atmosphere.” Gates clearly shares this mindset, as the Trust holds nearly 55 million shares of Canadian National Railway(NYSE: CNI) worth $6.2 billion.
What sets Canadian National apart is that it’s the only transcontinental railroad in North America, connecting the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast, and the Gulf of Mexico. Regarding Buffett’s point, railroads reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. This is primarily because they’re four times more efficient than long-haul trucks, making railroads a more cost-effective option. Add to that their high barriers to entry and significant economic moat, and it’s easy to understand the appeal.
Canadian National has a solid track record of dividend payments, with consecutive increases every year since it was initiated in 1996, and a current yield of 2.1%. The current payout ratio of 38% suggests there’s plenty of opportunity for future increases.
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Firms tied to Bill Gates and Ray Dalio purchased small stakes in Nvidia last quarter, filings show.
The Gates Foundation Trust and Bridgewater Associates both bought shares of the microchip maker.
Funds linked to George Soros, Jim Simons, and Stanley Druckenmiller pared or exited their positions.
Nvidia attracted two high-profile backers last quarter, as funds linked to Bill Gates and Ray Dalio took small stakes in the microchip maker.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which invests the Gates Foundation’s endowment, bought Nvidia shares for the first time on record, a SEC filing revealed this week. It purchased about 9,200 shares, worth $4 million at the end of September.
The Gates’ trust diversified its stock portfolio in the period, expanding it from 23 holdings to 74, but its total value was almost flat at $39 billion. Its largest positions were a $12 billion stake in Microsoft, and nearly $8 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock as a result of Warren Buffett’s yearly gifts to the foundation.
While the bet on Nvidia was relatively small, the wager still ranked in the top half of the trust’s portfolio by value. Cascade, the asset manager which oversees the Trust and Gates’ personal fortune, also disclosed new stakes in Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet. It may have invested in Nvidia as part of a broader effort to boost its Big Tech exposure.
Dalio-founded Bridgewater Associates established a stake in Nvidia last quarter too, filings show. The hedge-fund behemoth, run by three co-CIOs since Dalio stepped down last year, purchased just over 48,000 shares worth $21 million at September’s close.
The last time that Bridgewater reported a Nvidia stake was in the third quarter of last year. It’s worth noting the new wager is small relative to the firm’s biggest positions on September 30, which included a $700 million stake in Procter & Gamble and roughly $500 million positions in each of Costco and Coca-Cola.
Nvidia’s stock price has soared by about 240% this year, as investors wager the artificial-intelligence boom will supercharge demand for its graphics chips. The company has certainly received a boost; its revenue roughly doubled year-on-year to about $14 billion in the three months to July, lifting its net income by nearly 10-fold to over $6 billion.
Funds tied to other high-profile investors took a different tack to Gates and Dalio’s firms. Soros Fund Management dumped its entire $4 million stake in Nvidia, Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies slashed its bet by 34% to 1.2 million shares, and Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office trimmed its position by about 8% to 875,000 shares, filings showed this week.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Sunday it will donate $1.2 billion to help eradicate wild polio in the two remaining countries—Pakistan and Afghanistan—where the virus is endemic and prevent new strains of the virus from emerging, months after New York reported its first vaccine-derived polio case in nearly a decade.
Bill Gates makes a speech at the Malaria Summit in 2018.
Getty Images
Key Facts
The money will go toward the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a partnership including the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that focuses on eradicating the spread of polio.
The organization is seeking to raise $4.8 billion in total for its 2022-2026 program, and will raise more funds at a summit on October 18, according to the Gates Foundation.
Although significant progress has been achieved in the fight against polio, the disease “remains a threat,” billionaire co-founder Bill Gates said in a statement.
Melinda French Gates, the nonprofit’s co-founder and Bill Gates’ ex-wife, added that polio vaccination campaigns have “played a key role in strengthening health systems” in addition to stopping the spread of the disease.
Big Number
370 million. That’s how many children GPEI hopes to vaccinate against polio every year from 2022 to 2026, the Gates Foundation said Sunday.
News Peg
The ten-figure donation comes after samples of poliovirus were found in both the state of New York and London, leading officials to monitor for cases and ramp up calls for vaccination. The cases are believed to be from vaccine-derived polio: People who are vaccinated with live poliovirus can shed it in their stool, where it can spread through wastewater, mutate and then infect others who come into contact. New York declared an emergency last month after the virus was found in a fourth county in addition to New York City, and the state began monitoring wastewater after a vaccine-derived case of polio caused paralysis in a 20-year-old unvaccinated man in Rockland County. Many of the New York counties where the virus has been found have polio vaccination rates well below the national average. In London, health officials announced a new vaccination campaign in August to help boost coverage in children under 10, after vaccine-derived poliovirus was detected in wastewater from North and East London for the first time in decades.
Key Background
Polio is a contagious disease transmitted mostly through contact with fecal samples and occasionally coughing and sneezing. Before the polio vaccine was developed in 1955, around 15,000 people in the U.S. developed paralysis from the illness every year, according to the CDC. Poliovirus has been eliminated in many countries worldwide as a result of mass vaccination campaigns, including GPEI, which was launched in 1988 and is one of the largest worldwide public health initiatives in history. However, the virus still circulates in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where political instability and prolonged conflict have impeded vaccination campaigns. As of 2021, about 75% of Afghan children ages 12 to 23 months had been fully vaccinated against polio, while 83% had been vaccinated in Pakistan, according to UNICEF. The Gates Foundation has donated nearly $5 billion to the GPEI initiative in the past, while governments in high-income countries and other nonprofits have also contributed.
Tangent
Bill Gates told Forbes last month he plans to wrap up the foundation he co-chairs with Melinda in 25 years, explaining that “spending all the money in that timeframe makes sense.” During that time, he said he hopes to “try and bring infectious disease, or all of the diseases that make the world inequitable,” to an end, either through “eradication or getting them down to very low levels.” The news came after Gates announced in July he had made a $20 billion donation to the foundation. He said he plans to keep giving until he is no longer a billionaire.
Forbes Valuation
Gates—who made his fortune by co-founding Microsoft—is worth $99.8 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time estimates, making him the fifth richest person in the world. His ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, is worth $6.1 billion.
