March Madness 2025: Warren Buffett's $1 million bracket challenge finally has a winner

It took nearly a decade, but someone finally won Warren Buffett’s $1 million NCAA Tournament bracket challenge. The winning employee took home the grand prize after picking 31 of the 32 first-round games correctly, according to Business Insider.

Buffett’s bracket challenge isn’t available to everyone. Only employees of Berkshire Hathaway — where Buffett serves as CEO — can enter. Buffett has been running the challenge since 2016, though the conditions for winning have changed over the years.

On Monday, the company sent out a press release confirming an employee took home the $1 million prize by correctly predicting all but one of the first-round games. Eleven other Berkshire Hathaway employees also got 31 of 32 games right in the first round, but the winner got the first 29 tournament games correct before their first loss.

While only one person received the $1 million prize, the 11 runners-up got $100,000 from the company. The overall winner of the challenge opted to keep their identity private.

Buffett, 94, has run similar bracket challenges in the past. In 2014, he launched a $1 billion challenge to any Berkshire Hathaway employee who could correctly predict every single game in the NCAA Tournament. The odds of that are … extremely long. No one was able to claim the prize.

Over time, the contest rules shifted. In 2016, the challenge was reportedly amended, offering $1 million to any employee who could predict the first 48 games correctly. Still, no one managed to claim the grand prize.

The rules relaxed even further in 2025, as employees had to correctly predict 30 of the first 32 games in order to take home the grand prize, according to the Wall Street Journal. If no employee hit that mark, Buffett would pay out $250,000 to whoever got the closest. A consolation prize wasn’t necessary this year after a number of employees met the challenge requirements.

Buffett, who is worth $138 billion, can easily afford to part with the cash. The bigger question is whether he’ll make things tougher next year after someone finally won the grand prize.