LONDON – Bill Gates pledged on Thursday to give away $200 billion through his charitable foundation by 2045 and slammed Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” by slashing the US foreign aid budget.
The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft announced that he was accelerating his plans to divest almost all of his fortune and would close the foundation on December 31, 2045, years earlier than previously planned.
Gates stated that he believed the money would help him achieve several of his objectives, including the eradication of diseases like polio and malaria, the abolition of preventable deaths among women and children, and the reduction of global poverty.
His announcement comes after governments, including the Trump administration, have slashed international aid budgets used to combat deadly diseases and famine.
The cuts in the United States have been overseen by Musk, who has publicly boasted about “feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper,” and his Department of Government Efficiency. Approximately 80% of USAID programs are set to be cut; the agency spent $44 billion globally in fiscal 2023.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.
Gates warned in an interview with Reuters that decades of progress in reducing mortality would be reversed in the next four to six years as a result of global government funding cuts.
“The number of deaths will start going up for the first time … it is going to be millions more deaths because of the resources,” Gates told a news agency.
The Gates Foundation’s annual budget will be $9 billion by 2026, and around $10 billion per year after that due to increased spending. Gates has warned the White House that his foundation and other philanthropic organizations cannot fill the gaps left by governments.
“I think governments will come back to caring about children surviving” in the next 20 years, Gates said on Thursday.
Gates and Musk, the CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX, once agreed on the role of the wealthy in donating money to help others, but they have since disagreed several times.
When asked if he had recently appealed to Musk to change course, Gates stated that it was now up to Congress to decide the future of US aid spending.
“Gates is a huge liar,” Musk wrote in response to a tweet on his X social media platform featuring an interview with Gates warning about US aid cuts. Musk’s spokespersons were not immediately available for comment.
Gates stated that, despite his foundation’s vast resources, progress would be impossible without government assistance.
“There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” Gates wrote in a website post. “It is unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people.”
He praised Africa’s response to aid cuts, in which some governments have reallocated budgets, but noted that polio would not be eradicated without US funding.
Gates made the announcement during the foundation’s 25th anniversary. He founded the organization with his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2000, and was later joined by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
‘What My Parents Taught Me.’
Since its inception, the foundation has donated $100 billion, saving millions of lives and supporting initiatives such as the vaccine group Gavi and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
It will close after spending approximately 99% of Gates’ personal fortune, he stated. The founders expected the foundation to be completed decades after their deaths.
Gates, whose fortune is currently worth approximately $108 billion, expects the foundation to spend around $200 billion by 2045, with the final figure depending on markets and inflation.
The foundation has been chastised for wielding excessive power and influence in the field without proper accountability, including at the World Health Organization.
Gates himself was the subject of conspiracy theories, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He has spoken with Trump several times in recent months, including twice since the president took office on January 20, he told Reuters on Thursday, emphasizing the importance of continued investment in global health.
“The world has values. Gates told Reuters, “That is what my parents taught me.”