Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged to donate nearly all of his wealth by 2045, amounting to an estimated $200bn, to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people.
He also slammed tech billionaire Elon Musk for supporting sharp U.S. foreign aid cuts.
Speaking on Thursday, Gates said his foundation would distribute the massive sum over the next two decades, as his goal was to “give away virtually all my wealth” and close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on December 31, 2045.
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote in a personal statement on his website.
“There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” he added.
Gates announced this to mark the foundation’s 25th anniversary. He noted that the organisation, founded in 2000 with his former wife, Melinda French Gates, and later joined by Warren Buffett, had already given away $100bn. That figure, he said, would double to $200bn over the next 20 years.
“I have come a long way since I was just a kid starting a software company with my friend from middle school,” Gates stated.
However, the announcement came with sharp criticism of Musk and the current U.S. administration under President Donald Trump.
Musk, who leads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and is widely considered a key Trump ally, has supported massive cuts to international aid.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.
He pointed to the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as one example of the devastating impact of these cuts. The agency had previously provided billions for vaccines, maternal health, and emergency food aid to various developing countries.
Gates warned that despite private philanthropy, progress on issues like child mortality, polio eradication, and poverty reduction was impossible without strong government backing.
“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for their poorest people,” Gates wrote, highlighting reduced aid from the U.S., UK, and France.
He hailed African governments for reallocating resources in response to the aid shortfalls but warned, “As an example, polio would not be eradicated without U.S. funding.”
In the post on his website, Gates said he had drawn inspiration from Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that the rich have a responsibility to give back to society.
“One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth,” Gates wrote.
“It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today,” he added.
While the Gates Foundation remains one of the most powerful philanthropic institutions globally, with an annual budget expected to hit $9 billion by 2026, it has also faced criticism for wielding outsized influence in global health without sufficient accountability, including within the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Gates, whose current net worth stands at approximately $108bn, said the final amount given away would depend on inflation and market performance, but the goal was to spend 99 per cent of his personal fortune.
“I hope other wealthy people consider how much they can accelerate progress for the world’s poorest if they increased the pace and scale of their giving, because it is such a profoundly impactful way to give back to society,” Gates said.