Bill Gates announced Thursday that he plans to give away nearly his entire fortune—an estimated $200 billion USD—by 2045 through his charitable foundation, accelerating his long-term philanthropy in response to what he called a growing global crisis. In a direct and stinging rebuke, Gates accused Elon Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children” by overseeing drastic cuts to U.S. foreign aid.
Speaking to Reuters in New York, the Microsoft co-founder revealed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will close on December 31, 2045, far earlier than originally expected. By then, it will have spent nearly all of Gates’s current $108 billion fortune on efforts to eradicate polio and malaria, reduce maternal and child mortality, and fight poverty.
The announcement follows steep cuts to the U.S. foreign aid budget, which Gates says are already beginning to reverse decades of global health progress. Those cuts, estimated to affect up to 80 per cent of programs managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), have been aggressively implemented under Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk, who has publicly boasted about putting USAID “into the wood chipper,” now finds himself in Gates’s crosshairs.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times, warning that millions could die over the next few years due to funding gaps.
Though the Gates Foundation’s budget is set to climb to $10 billion annually by 2026, Gates stressed that no amount of private philanthropy can replace government action. He expressed hope that nations would eventually renew their commitment to global development, especially in areas such as disease eradication and child survival. “I think governments will come back to caring about children surviving,” he said.
Musk, responding via his X social media platform, dismissed Gates’s warnings. “Gates is a huge liar,” he wrote in reply to a post highlighting Gates’s remarks. Musk’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for further comment.
The Gates Foundation, launched in 2000 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and later joined by Warren Buffett, has donated over $100 billion since its inception. It has funded major global initiatives, including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Its work is widely credited with saving millions of lives, though it has also faced criticism for wielding outsized influence over global health policy with limited accountability.
Gates acknowledged those concerns but stood by the foundation’s mission and urgency. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people,” he said in a personal statement. He also expressed concern that, without U.S. support, diseases like polio may never be fully eradicated.
Marking the foundation’s 25th anniversary, Gates said his decision to fast-track giving was driven by moral clarity, global need, and his belief that human dignity must remain a priority. “The world does have values,” he said. “That’s what my parents taught me.”