The annual online auction with a first prize of lunching with the investment billionaire has seen bids top the $200,000 mark.

The auction, to dine out on steak with celebrity high-roller Warren Buffett, will see the winning bid joined at the dining table by up to seven additional guests at the New York steakhouse run by Smith & Wollensky.

Proceeds from the benefit lunch will go towards the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit organisation that operates in the Tenderloin district, offering meals, child care, health care and vocational training for the city’s homeless and poor.

The charity lunch was first begun in 2000 after Buffett’s late wife Susan, who passed away in 2004, introduced the billionaire to Glide and founder Reverend Cecil Williams. The past 10 lunches have generated over $5.9 million for the charity.

This year’s auction is being run by EBay Inc’s website, and has so far seen 31 separate bids for the Buffett luncheon, although usual process means that the last couple of hours of bidding will see the most frenzied action. Last year’s winning bid was $1,680,300 from Toronto-based Salida Capital Corp, while the all-time record bid was made in 2008 by the Hong Kong investor Zhao Danyang, worth $2,110,100.

Buffett, 79, is reportedly worth around $47 billion according to figures published by Forbes magazine. His investment and insurance company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has been the main source of his wealth, much of which has already been pledged to charity.