“The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” That’s not a Gates original, but a quote from Andrew Carnegie that Bill Gates seems determined to make his exit line.
In a move that stunned even veteran philanthropy watchers, Microsoft co-founder and world-famous philanthropist Bill Gates announced that he will donate 99% of his fortune—roughly $200 billion- by 2045, effectively winding down the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation after 45 years of operations. The foundation has already given away $100 billion since its founding in 2000. This acceleration puts a bold punctuation mark on Gates’ legacy, signaling a shift from “give forever” to “give now—because the world doesn’t have time to wait.”
But this wasn’t just a quiet blog post about values. This was also a clapback, and Gates didn’t hide the target: Elon Musk.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said bluntly in an interview with the Financial Times, referring to Musk’s endorsement of massive foreign aid cuts that threaten programs preventing famine, disease, and maternal death.
According to Gates, those cuts—led by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), part of Trump’s administration—will roll back decades of progress in global health, resulting in “millions more deaths.” The foundation, which plans to scale up to a $10 billion annual budget, can’t fill the vacuum left behind by collapsing U.S. foreign aid. And Gates is tired of pretending otherwise.
From Quiet Wealth to Loud Urgency
Gates is no stranger to the giving game. Alongside Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, he co-founded the Giving Pledge, nudging billionaires toward philanthropy. But this latest move is not just generous—it’s urgent.
“We can spend a lot more if we’re not trying to be perpetual,” Gates said, “and I know that the spending will be in line with my values.”
By 2045, Gates says the foundation will have exhausted nearly all of his wealth and will shut down. Not a cent for perpetuity. This is philanthropy with an expiration date and a now-or-never attitude.
A Musk-Sized Rift
The friction with Musk isn’t new, but it’s now nuclear. The two have clashed over climate, vaccines, and charitable priorities before, but Gates’ latest salvo is different: it’s about life and death on a global scale. Musk, for his part, responded with his usual restraint by calling Gates a liar on X.
The rift also underscores two radically different views of tech billionaire responsibility:
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Gates sees wealth as a moral debt to be paid down while alive, directed toward tangible, measurable outcomes like ending malaria or eradicating polio.
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Musk views wealth as a tool to reshape civilization, often through moonshots—Mars colonies, brain interfaces, AI, and disassembling USAID.
One seeks to save lives on Earth. The other wants to build a backup plan for it.
Why Announce It Now?
The timing of Gates’ pledge coincides with the foundation’s 25th anniversary. It also comes at a moment when foreign aid is politically unpopular and populist governments are cutting budgets for international development. Gates appears to be making a loud public bet that philanthropy must act now or risk watching a generation of global progress evaporate.
It’s also a strategic shot across the bow to other ultra-wealthy figures. Gates may be warning: if the wealthiest people on Earth don’t start giving like the house is on fire, we may find out it is.
A Billionaire Death Wish—or a Blueprint?
There’s a poetic symmetry to Gates’ move. He built his fortune on software that scaled infinitely. Now, he wants to scale himself down to zero—financially, not figuratively.
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die,” Gates wrote on his blog, “but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.”
He’s betting that emptying his bank account before his coffin closes isn’t an act of charity—it’s an act of strategy. And maybe a little vengeance, too.
Gates’ dramatic act won’t spark a domino effect. At best, it will guilt-trip a few, maybe inspire a handful of family foundations to frontload their giving. But the rest? They’ll keep dodging estate tax, building vanity nonprofits, and funding pet obsessions like cryonics and asteroid defense.
So yes—it’s theatrical, but not transformational for his peers. Gates knows that. This wasn’t a message to his fellow billionaires.
It was a message to the public, to historians, and to us—a final attempt to show that extreme wealth can be a tool for global justice… before the era of government-backed compassion completely ends.
Donate it to what, exactly? Funding violent protests? Vaccines to make humanity infertile? Carcinogenic supplements for cows that make them fart less? Fuck off, Gates. Musk may be a flawed person, but at least he’s trying to do good.