Nonilex

The $200 Billion Gamble: #BillGates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation

In a wide-ranging interview, he explains his decision — amid the Trump admin’s assault on #ForeignAid — to accelerate the end of his giving.

by David Wallace-Wells

Today the #GatesFoundation celebrates its 25th anniversary by announcing its plans to close up shop.

#GiftArticle
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-foundation-closing-2045.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Fk8.mBIv.zs6mjh2Ut3w8&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p

Bill Gates Explains His Plans to Close the Gates Foundation in 2045

In a wide-ranging interview, he explains his decision — amid the Trump administration’s assault on foreign aid — to accelerate the end of his giving.

The New York Times
May 8, 2025 at 12:44pmWeb
Show threadNonilexMay 8, 2025

Established in 2000 — when Melinda French Gates was just 35 & #BillGates was 44 & the world’s richest man — the #GatesFoundation quickly became one of the most consequential philanthropies the world has ever seen, utterly reshaping the landscape of global #PublicHealth, pouring >$100 billion into causes starved for resources & helping save tens of millions of lives.

#philanthropy

Show threadNonilexMay 8, 2025

For all its pragmatic #PublicHealth spade work, the #GatesFoundation has also served as a kind of valorous abstraction—the seeming embodiment of “the Golden Rule,” in a phrase that #BillGates likes to use, & the face of an increasingly anachronistic era of elite optimism.

“You could say this announcement is not very timely,” Gates says, but the timeline isn’t short: He is committing the foundation to 20 more years of generous #aid, >$200B in total, targeting #health & #human #development.

Show threadNonilexMay 8, 2025

And it comes laced with familiar #humanitarian confidence, as #BillGates & his team now believe that their central goals can be achieved in much shorter time. But it is also disconcertingly definitive: The #GatesFoundation will close its doors, permanently, on Dec. 31, 2045, at least several decades before originally intended. In the meantime, it will be spending down its endowment, as well as almost all of Gates’s remaining personal fortune.

#philanthropy

Show threadEhay2kMay 8, 2025

@Nonilex

US aid cuts will result in the deaths of millions of KIDS.

There's a special place in Hell for this administration.

Show threadArdentArchivistMay 8, 2025

@Nonilex

NYT: "Who’s the world’s richest man? Elon Musk. And he’s not giving much away, if anything, to the needs of the world’s poor."

BG: "Well, he’s the one who cut the U.S.A.I.D. budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn’t go to a party that weekend."

Y’know, in our old age I might just begin to like Bill Gates…