Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings just gave stock worth $1.1 billion to a Silicon Valley charity

• Netflix cofounder and executive chairman Reed Hastings gave away 40% of his stake in the streaming giant.
• He donated the holding, worth about $1.1 billion, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
• The charity is favored by the elite of Silicon Valley including Mark Zuckerberg.

Reed Hastings, the cofounder and executive chairman of Netflix, has given away 2 million shares in the streaming platform.

The stake is worth about $1.1 billion and were given to an unidentified entity, per a regulatory filing on Friday.

A Netflix representative told The Wall Street Journal the shares had been donated to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The charity was founded in 2007 and is one of the largest nonprofits in the Bay Area. It's favored by leading tech figures including Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

In 2012 the Meta CEO and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated 18 million shares worth about $500 million to the foundation. It uses donations to fund activities and social enterprises that aim to help "reduce systemic inequities."

Individuals can set up tax-free "donor-advised funds" to hold large sums before it is dispensed as grants.

At the end of 2022, the foundation had more than $10 billion in assets, per the Journal.

Hastings' donation accounted for about 40% of his stake in Netflix.

He is worth $5.4 billion and is in 491th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of Tuesday.

Hastings founded the DVD subscription service Netflix in 1997 with entrepreneur Marc Randolph.

He stepped down as co-CEO in January last year after nearly 25 years in the role, during which the company became the world's dominant streaming platform.

Netflix is valued at $252 billion and its stock is up by 63% over the past 12 months.

In 2020 Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin gave $120 million to two historically Black colleges and the United Negro College Fund.

They've also signed The Giving Pledge, the philanthropy pact founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to inspire billionaire signatories to give away most their wealth.

Netflix did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.