Bill Gates pledged to donate $200 billion through his foundation by 2045, accelerating plans to relinquish nearly his entire fortune while launching a critique of Elon Musk, whom he accuses of “killing the world’s poorest children” by cutting US foreign aid, Reuters reported.
The Microsoft co-founder, 69, announced on Thursday that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will close on 31 December 2045 after ramping up $10 billion annual spending.
Gates’ urgency stems from drastic cuts to international aid programmes, including an 80% reduction in USAID’s $44 billion budget overseen by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk, who boasts of feeding USAID “into the wood chipper,” faced direct condemnation from Gates, who warned that such austerity threatens to reverse decades of progress in child survival rates.
The billionaire singled out Musk, now the world’s wealthiest person, during a Financial Times interview.
The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one. The number of deaths will start going up for the first time … it’s going to be millions more deaths because of the resources.
Gates emphasised that philanthropy cannot offset government withdrawals, urging Congress to intervene.
There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people. It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people.
The announcement coincides with the foundation’s 25th anniversary, marking $100 billion disbursed since its 2000 launch with ex-wife Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett. Its initiatives, including vaccine alliance Gavi and the Global Fund, have saved millions of lives.
Critics have long questioned the foundation’s outsized influence over global health policy, particularly at the WHO, while conspiracy theories targeting Gates proliferated during COVID-19.
