Bill Gates says he will give away roughly $108 billion and wind down his foundation by 2045

Key decision

It has been reported that Bill Gates published an essay titled "Accelerating the End of My Foundation" in which he announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (renamed the Gates Foundation in 2024) will close on December 31, 2045, and that he intends to donate nearly all of his personal wealth—Forbes' 2025 estimate of about $108 billion—over the next roughly 20 years. The piece closes with a personal line he wrote: "I hope to be remembered for how I lived a meaningful life, not for being rich when I died." Chinese tech outlet Huxiu carried the report and a summary of his autobiographical account of Microsoft and philanthropy.

Fifty years of Microsoft, and why this matters

Gates framed the pledge against the sweep of five decades since he and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975. He rehearsed the company's near-death moments in the 1990s, its rebirth under Satya Nadella and the role of large AI bets—most famously a 2019 investment in OpenAI that it has been reported later grew into far larger commitments—in driving Microsoft back to the top of global markets. Microsoft’s market capitalization, which reached roughly $3.4 trillion in 2025, and its stock climb from about $38 at Nadella’s 2014 appointment to roughly $460 in 2025, are the financial foundation for Gates’ ability to make this pledge.

Global and geopolitical implications

Why should readers outside the U.S. care? The Gates Foundation has been one of the world’s largest funders of global health, development and climate work and has engaged in partnerships worldwide, including in China, so winding it down could shift program funding and partnerships at a sensitive geopolitical moment. It has been reported that the foundation’s programs intersect with research and health systems across borders; as U.S.–China tensions, export controls and scrutiny of technology and research collaborations intensify, the redistribution—or termination—of large-scale philanthropic funding carries policy as well as humanitarian consequences. Will other donors step in to preserve long-term projects? That question now tops the agenda as Gates moves from wealth accumulation to accelerated giving.