This is incredible. I honestly don't think I've ever seen someone give away a business worth billions to charity. I wish Patagonia the best!

To be fair the guy is ancient and Patagonia wasn't public, so he could only ever take out loans against the company, he couldn't actually turn his shares into cash. It's like owning 2 billion in real-estate on the moon

> couldn't turn his shares into cash

Isn't there this thing businesses do sometimes that's called "going public", where one puts their share of the ownership on the market for sale, in return for which they receive cash?

Why would that not have been possible for this ancient guy too?

Still it's a laudable contribution! Let's not diminish it :)