Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. — © AFP Daniel ROLAND
John BIERS
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced Thursday an accelerated timeframe for giving away his fortune as he touted artificial intelligence as a game-changer to boost public health and save lives globally.
Under a new timetable, the Gates Foundation will spend more than $200 billion over the next 20 years, shutting down in 2045. The organization had originally planned to close 20 years after Gates’ death.
The announcement came as Gates took aim at another billionaire tech titan, Elon Musk.
The Tesla CEO pushed through draconian cuts to the US Agency for International Development because Musk “didn’t go to a party that weekend,” Gates told the New York Times in an apparent dig at Musk’s lifestyle.
Gates is listed as the 13th on the Forbes “real-time” billionaire list, with a net worth of $112.6 billion. Musk is first with $383.2 billion.
Gates, 69, published a chart showing his net worth plummeting 99 percent over the next 20 years in a blog post announcing the shift, describing a doubling of the pace of giving.
“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.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched in 2000, the same year Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. In 2024, Melinda French Gates exited the foundation three years after the couple’s divorce.
The organization, which had more than $71 billion in assets at the end of 2023, has been credited with helping to reshape the world of global public health.
It lists five offices throughout Africa, in addition to locations in the United States, Europe, China, India and the Middle East.
Gates cited progress in health efforts including campaigns to eradicate polio and the creation of a new vaccine for rotavirus that has helped reduce the number of children who die from diarrhea each year by 75 percent.
Separate from the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft founder said he plans to continue to provide funding for initiatives to expand access to affordable energy and for breakthrough research into Alzheimer’s disease.
– Not a ‘forever’ foundation –
In the blog post, Gates credited the writings of 19th-century US steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, whose foundation is still around.
But Gates told the New York Times he had no designs on creating a “forever” foundation out of “some weird legacy thing,” preferring to pump out billions more to take advantage of emerging technologies.
“The tools are so phenomenal,” he said of the potential for AI in global health.
“All the intelligence will be in the AI, and so you will have a personal doctor that’s as good as somebody who has a full-time dedicated doctor — that’s actually better than even what rich countries have,” Gates told the New York Times.
While private foundations can do a lot, Gates described the government role as essential, ruing deep budget cuts by the United States, Britain, France and other countries.
“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people. But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty,” he wrote.
The moves have included the assault on USAID by Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” in Donald Trump’s presidential administration.
Gates called the cuts “stunning,” far more severe than expected.
Musk is “the one who cut the USAID budget,” Gates told the New York Times. “He put it in the wood chipper.”
In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates ridiculed Musk’s apparent confusion of Gaza Province in Mozambique with Gaza in the Middle East as the Trump administration targeted programs.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said of Musk in an interview with the Financial Times.
AFP
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