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," he added. "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, which is the third-largest charitable foundation in the world.
The organization was launched in 2000 by Gates and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, when they were 44 and 35, respectively.
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 5 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," Gates said. "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.
"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."
Gates stepped down as Microsoft's CEO in 2008 to devote more time to the foundation.
It held $69 billion in assets as of 2020 and had an endowment of $75.2 billion as of 2023.
The foundation has donated tens of billions of dollars to causes such as global health, gender equality, and water sanitation programs.
Warren Buffett, who made headlines last week when he announced he was stepping down from Berkshire Hathaway, was central to the Gates Foundation.
He served as a trustee of the foundation from 2006 to 2022, and his contributions to the foundation totaled $36 billion as of 2022.
French Gates resigned from her positions as cochair and trustee of the foundation in 2024, following her divorce from Gates in 2021.
