The Gates Foundation announced on Thursday its plan to invest over $200 billion in the coming two decades. This move aims to intensify their focus on public health initiatives and conclude operations by 2045.
The new timetable means a change to the organization’s charter, which planned for the foundation to sunset 20 years after the death of Bill Gates.
The change is fueled by both “urgency and opportunity,” according to the foundation, as advancements in artificial intelligence enhance the potential for improving human well-being at a time when government assistance funding is being reduced.
“In the initial 25 years of the Gates Foundation — which has been supported partly through the kindness of Warren Buffett — we have distributed over $100 billion,” stated Gates, aged 69, in a blog entry, citing the prominent American financier.
“Over the next two decades, we will double our giving,” Gates wrote.
The blog post included a graph illustrating that Gates’s wealth dropped by 99 percent within the following two decades. Currently, Gates ranks at number 13 on the Forbes “real-time” billionaires list, boasting a fortune of $112.6 billion.
“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.
I have too many critical issues to address to keep resources that could otherwise assist individuals.
In the year 2000, when Bill Gates resigned from his role at Microsoft’s helm, he also initiated the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alongside his wife. Fast forward to 2024; three years post their separation, Melinda French Gates decided to part ways with the organization she co-founded.
Gates highlighted advancements in initiating worldwide public health initiatives such as programs aimed at eradicating polio and the development of a novel rotavirus vaccine. This vaccine has contributed significantly to reducing child mortality rates due to diarrhea by 75 percent annually.
“Through speeding up our contributions, I aim to set the world on a course to eliminate preventable deaths among mothers and infants and help lift millions of individuals out of poverty,” Gates stated in his blog post.
Apart from the Gates Foundation, the former Microsoft head stated his intention to keep supporting efforts aimed at increasing access to affordable energy as well as pioneering studies into Alzheimer’s disease.
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