Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has announced an ambitious plan to donate 99% of his estimated $107 billion fortune and permanently shut down the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation by December 31, 2045.
The move marks a significant acceleration of the foundation’s original plan, which had envisioned closing several decades after Gates’ and co-founder Melinda French Gates’ deaths.
In a post on his personal blog, Gates Notes, the Microsoft co-founder wrote, “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.” He continued, “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
Gates emphasized that he now views the next 20 years as a crucial window for impact. “That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned,” he wrote. “I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world. And on December 31, 2045, the foundation will close its doors permanently.”
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Founded in 2000 with his then-wife Melinda French Gates, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has disbursed over $100 billion toward global health, education, poverty alleviation, and pandemic preparedness. It played a key role in global vaccine access, infectious disease control, and sanitation initiatives.
“This is a change from our original plans,” Gates explained in the post. “When Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation in 2000, we included a clause in the foundation’s very first charter: The organisation would sunset several decades after our deaths. A few years ago, I began to rethink that approach.”
“More recently, with the input from our board, I now believe we can achieve the foundation’s goals on a shorter timeline, especially if we double down on key investments and provide more certainty to our partners,” he added.
Gates detailed key milestones in the foundation’s journey: “I am deeply proud of what we have accomplished in our first 25 years. We were central to the creation of Gavi and the Global Fund, both of which transformed the way the world procures and delivers lifesaving tools like vaccines and anti-retrovirals. Together, these two groups have saved more than 80 million lives so far.”
He also highlighted other critical achievements, including a vaccine initiative that drastically reduced child mortality: “We supported 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. Every step of the way, we brought together other foundations, non-profits, governments, multilateral agencies, and the private sector as partners to solve big problems — as we will continue to do for the next twenty years.”
Gates also used the announcement to express alarm at recent shifts in global health funding and aid. In an interview with the Associated Press, he warned about the consequences of aid reductions — including U.S. cuts to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“These actions are putting lives at risk,” Gates warned, pointing to Mozambique as one example where critical health programs have been disrupted. He criticized the trend of deprioritizing global cooperation, stating that reduced engagement with multilateral health agencies could “lead to preventable deaths and the resurgence of diseases long thought under control.”
Despite mounting criticism from some corners of global health for what they view as the Gates Foundation’s outsized influence, Gates remains unapologetic. “Like any private citizen, I can choose how to spend the money I earn,” he said.
“I think 20 years is the right balance between giving as much as we can to make progress on these things and giving people a lot of notice that now this money will be gone,” he added in the AP interview.
According to Daily Mail and Time Magazine, the one percent of his wealth not going to philanthropy, approximately $1.6 billion, may ultimately go to his three adult children: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe Gates.
The Gates Foundation, which will remain active for the next two decades, plans to increase its annual budget from $6 billion to $9 billion by 2026. Future efforts will continue to focus on global health, pandemic prevention, gender equality, climate adaptation, and water and sanitation.
“I hope by giving more, we can mitigate some of the suffering people are facing right now and help fulfill the foundation’s vision to give every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life,” Gates wrote.