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Bill Gates has revealed plans to shut down his charitable foundation at the end of 2045 — several decades earlier than intended.
“There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” Gates said in a blog post.
“That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned. 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.”
The Microsoft cofounder initially made the announcement in an interview with The New York Times to mark the 25th anniversary of the Gates Foundation.
Gates said in the interview that the foundation had “achieved far more than I — or I think anyone — expected” and helped reduce the number of childhood deaths from 10 million to five million a year.
Asked why he was announcing plans to sunset the operation, he said it made a “big difference” to spend its resources “now versus later.”
“We’re not trying to steward our money for some weird legacy thing. If we were trying to be a forever foundation, instead of being able to spend $9 billion a year, we’d have to drop down to spending like $6 billion a year,” Gates said.
“Normally we’re saving lives for $2,000 or $3,000. But given the problems that are out there, we’re actually now saving lives for less.
“And this is a miraculous time. A lot of the hundred billion we’ve spent is to build a pipeline, and the most important stuff the foundation is doing is the stuff that’s in the R&D pipeline right now.”
This is a developing story. Please check in for further updates.
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