{"id":862140,"date":"2025-07-12T23:12:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T04:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/12\/bill-gates-speeds-up-giving-away-fortune-blasts-musk\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T23:12:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T04:12:13","slug":"bill-gates-speeds-up-giving-away-fortune-blasts-musk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/12\/bill-gates-speeds-up-giving-away-fortune-blasts-musk\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates speeds up giving away fortune, blasts Musk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. \u2014 \u00a9 AFP Daniel ROLAND<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

John BIERS<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Under a new timetable, the\u00a0Gates 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\u2019 death.<\/p>\n

The announcement came as Gates took aim at another billionaire tech titan, Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

The Tesla CEO pushed through draconian cuts to the\u00a0US Agency for International Development because Musk \u201cdidn\u2019t go to a party that weekend,\u201d Gates told the New York Times in an apparent dig at Musk\u2019s lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Gates is listed as the 13th on the Forbes \u201creal-time\u201d billionaire list, with a net worth of $112.6 billion. Musk is first with $383.2 billion.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that \u2018he died rich\u2019 will not be one of them,\u201d Gates wrote.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s divorce.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It lists five offices throughout Africa, in addition to locations in the United States, Europe, China, India and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Not a \u2018forever\u2019 foundation \u2013<\/p>\n

In the blog post, Gates credited the writings of 19th-century US steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, whose foundation is still around.<\/p>\n

But Gates told the New York Times he had no designs on creating a \u201cforever\u201d foundation out of \u201csome weird legacy thing,\u201d preferring to pump out billions more to take advantage of emerging technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tools are so phenomenal,\u201d he said of the potential for AI in global health.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the intelligence will be in the AI, and so you will have a personal doctor that\u2019s as good as somebody who has a full-time dedicated doctor \u2014 that\u2019s actually better than even what rich countries have,\u201d Gates told the New York Times.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unclear whether the world\u2019s 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,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The moves have included the assault on USAID by Musk\u2019s \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d in Donald Trump\u2019s presidential administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gates called the cuts \u201cstunning,\u201d far more severe than expected.<\/p>\n

Musk is \u201cthe one who cut the USAID budget,\u201d Gates told the New York Times. \u201cHe put it in the wood chipper.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates ridiculed Musk\u2019s apparent confusion of Gaza Province in Mozambique with Gaza in the Middle East as the Trump administration targeted programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe picture of the world\u2019s richest man killing the world\u2019s poorest children is not a pretty one,\u201d Gates said of Musk in an interview with the Financial Times.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

AFP
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. \u2014 \u00a9 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\u00a0Gates Foundation will spend more than $200 billion over the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":862141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367,25776],"tags":[8591,16141],"class_list":{"0":"post-862140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gates","8":"category-speeds","9":"tag-gates","10":"tag-speeds"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}