Bill Gates set to give away $200B US by 2045, says Musk is 'killing' world's poorest children

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: May 08, 2025 2:57 PM EDT | Last Updated: 43 minutes ago

Bill Gates pledged connected Thursday to springiness distant $200 billion US via his charitable instauration by 2045 and lashed retired astatine Elon Musk, accusing the world's richest man of "killing the world's poorest children" done immense cuts to the U.S. overseas aid budget.

The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft said helium was speeding up his plans to divest astir each of his luck and would adjacent the instauration connected Dec. 31, 2045, years earlier than antecedently planned. Gates said he believed the wealth would help achieve respective of his goals, specified arsenic eradicating diseases similar polio and malaria, ending preventable deaths among women and children, and reducing global poverty.

His announcement follows moves by governments, including the Trump administration, to slash planetary assistance budgets used to forestall deadly illness and famine.

The U.S. cuts person been overseen by Musk, who has publically bragged astir feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development "into the wood chipper," and astir his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Around 80 per cent of USAID programs are acceptable to beryllium cut; the bureau spent $44 billion US worldwide successful fiscal 2023.

"The representation of the world's richest antheral sidesplitting the world's poorest children is not a beauteous one," Gates told the Financial Times.

In an interview with Reuters, Gates warned of a stark reversal to decades of advancement successful reducing mortality over the adjacent 4 to six years owed to the backing cuts by governments worldwide.

"The fig of deaths volition commencement going up for the archetypal clip ... it's going to beryllium millions much deaths due to the fact that of the resources," Gates told Reuters.

Foundation cannot capable captious gaps, Gates warns 

The Gates Foundation's yearly fund volition scope $9 billion US by 2026 and astir $10 billion US annually aft that owed to the accelerated spending. Gates has warned the White House that his instauration and different philanthropies cannot fill the gaps near by governments.

"I deliberation governments volition travel backmost to caring astir children surviving" implicit the adjacent 20-year period, though, Gates said on Thursday.

Gates and Musk, the second of whom is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, once agreed implicit the relation of the affluent successful giving distant wealth to assistance others, but person since clashed respective times.

WATCH | Why overseas assistance matters for satellite stability: 

Asked if helium had appealed to Musk precocious to alteration course, Gates said it was present up to Congress to determine connected the aboriginal for U.S. assistance spending.

"Gates is a immense liar," Musk said successful reply to a tweet connected his X societal media level that featured an interrogation with Gates warning astir U.S. assistance cuts. Musk's spokespeople were not instantly disposable for comment.

Gates said that contempt his foundation's heavy pockets, advancement would not beryllium imaginable without authorities support.

"There are excessively galore urgent problems to lick for maine to clasp onto resources that could beryllium utilized to assistance people," Gates wrote successful a station connected his website. "It's unclear whether the world's richest countries volition proceed to basal up for its poorest people."

Foundation has fixed distant $100B US since inception

He praised the effect to assistance cuts successful Africa, wherever immoderate governments person reallocated budgets, but said that, arsenic an example, polio would not beryllium eradicated without U.S. funding.

Gates made the announcement connected the foundation's 25th anniversary. He acceptable up the enactment with his then-wife Melinda French Gates in 2000, and they were aboriginal joined by billionaire capitalist Warren Buffett.

Since inception, the instauration has fixed distant $100 billion US, helping prevention millions of lives and backing initiatives similar the vaccine radical Gavi and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

It volition adjacent aft it spends astir 99 per cent of Gates's idiosyncratic fortune, he said. The founders primitively expected the instauration to wrapper up in the decades aft their deaths.

Gates, whose luck is presently valued at astir $108 billion US, expects the instauration to walk astir $200 billion US by 2045, with the last fig babelike connected markets and inflation.

The foundation has faced criticism for its outsized powerfulness and power successful the tract without the requisite accountability, including astatine the World Health Organization.

Gates himself was besides taxable to conspiracy theories, peculiarly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has spoken to Trump several times successful caller months, and doubly since the president took office on Jan. 20, helium told Reuters connected Thursday, connected the value of continued concern successful planetary health.

"The satellite does person values. That's what my parents taught me," Gates told Reuters.