Bill Gates, Once the World’s Richest Man, Will Close His Foundation and Give Away Nearly All His Money

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is winding down his charity while ramping up his charitable spending, vowing to dole out $200 billion and divest 99 percent of his personal wealth to philanthropic causes over the next 20 years. “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. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” the Microsoft co-founder wrote on the Gates Foundation’s website Thursday. The pledged amount will be double what the Gates Foundation, which Mr. Gates, 69, launched with his then-wife, Melinda, paid out during its first 25 years, with most of the funding going toward global health initiatives such as fighting AIDS and malaria in Africa. Mr. Gates’s current net worth is $108 billion. The Gates Foundation, considered one of the most effective charitable foundations ever, will close for good in 2045. Mr. Gates used his announcement to take pot shots at a fellow tech billionaire, Elon Musk, whom he accused of “killing the world’s poorest children” by slashing American international aid programs like USAID. The Trump administration has contended that USAID was rife with waste, spent money inappropriately on ideologically driven race and gender initiatives, and consorted with the United Nations Gaza aid group with ties to Hamas, UNWRA. USAID’s core function, however, was getting food and medical aid to populations in crisis. Mr. Gates, 69, said the cuts left “life-saving” food and medicines to go to waste in warehouses.“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Mr. Gates told the Financial Times, making reference to the $50 million in contraceptives DOGE canceled after mistakenly believing the condoms were heading to the Gaza Strip rather than to their actual destination, the Gaza province in Mozambique.While Mr. Musk admitted the mistake, he told reporters: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms anywhere, frankly.”The announcement comes at a time when the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a frequent critic of Mr. Gates, is staffing his agency with fellow vaccine skeptics who have openly questioned the current system by which vaccines, like the Covid-19 shot the Gates Foundation helped fund, are developed and approved in the United States.In a since-deleted 2020 social media post, Mr. Kennedy accused Mr. Gates and his “cronies” of using his billions of dollars in philanthropy to exert “dictatorial control over global health policy.”Mr. Gates said his foundation will focus on ending preventable child deaths, eradicating deadly infectious diseases, and helping millions of people break free from poverty.“Our plans are ambitious. And although I am hopeful we will achieve them, I cannot ignore a simple truth: None of this progress is possible without partnership from governments,” Mr. Gates said.

Bill Gates, Once the World’s Richest Man, Will Close His Foundation and Give Away Nearly All His Money

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