Bill Gates announces plans to give away 'almost all' of his money

Bill Gates has announced his intention to give away "virtually all" of his money and close the Gates Foundation in 20 years. When Bill and Melinda French Gates created the Gates Foundation in 2000, they planned for the organization to continue its work using their remaining fortune for decades after their deaths. But now the billionaire founder of Microsoft says he doesn't want to wait that long to give away most of his wealth.

Gates announced Thursday that he now plans to distribute “virtually all” of his fortune — he estimates about $200 billion — over the next 20 years before closing the foundation on Dec. 31, 2045, CNN reports.

The announcement comes as President Donald Trump's administration moves to cut funding for health care programs, foreign aid and other government benefits — programs the Gates Foundation supports — raising concerns about slowing progress on research and other important projects.

Bill Gates wants to accelerate his foundation’s work on global health and justice initiatives, and hopes the move will serve as an example for other billionaires, he wrote in a blog post published Thursday morning. The pledge builds on Gates’s experience in promoting philanthropy. In 2010, he, along with his ex-wife French Gates and Warren Buffett, launched the Giving Pledge, a program designed to encourage wealthy individuals to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes, either during their lifetimes or in their wills. More than 240 people have now signed it.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I firmly believe that 'he died rich' will not be one of them,” wrote Gates, who turns 70 later this year. “I have too many pressing issues to address to hold back resources that could be used to help people.”

The Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations, has given away more than $100 billion since its founding, including to develop new vaccines, diagnostic tools, and treatments to fight diseases around the world, CNN reports. Gates has ramped up his giving in recent years, especially in the wake of the pandemic, but Thursday’s announcement marks a dramatic acceleration in the mobilization of his wealth. The Gates Foundation called it “the largest philanthropic undertaking in modern history.”

Over the next 20 years, the Gates Foundation will focus on three core goals: ending preventable maternal and infant deaths, eliminating deadly infectious diseases, and lifting hundreds of millions of people around the world out of poverty.

In a statement, the foundation expressed concern about what it called stagnant trends in global health. And in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, Gates accused fellow billionaire Elon Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children” through his work at the Department of Government Effectiveness, which has been cutting U.S. foreign aid programs. At an event in New York on Thursday to announce the commitment, Gates said he met with Trump in February to raise his concerns, in particular, about cuts to USAID funding.

At the event, which included billionaire Mike Bloomberg, singer Jon Batiste and other philanthropic partners, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said the world was at a moment “where we face, quite literally, the toughest political and economic headwinds we’ve faced since our founding.” He added that “much of our amazing progress is at risk.”

But in a blog post on Thursday, Gates expressed optimism that advances in artificial intelligence, combined with his donations, could speed up progress.

Gates is currently worth $108 billion; he is the fifth-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He says his wealth will drop 99% by 2045. The $200 billion he plans to pass through the foundation over the next 20 years will come from his existing $77 billion endowment and his personal fortune, including any proceeds from ongoing business investments such as TerraPower, the nuclear energy company he founded.