May 8, 2025 Pranjal Saini
Bill Gates has always been a man of numbers billions in net worth, millions of lives impacted, and thousands of technological innovations. But on a rainy Thursday morning, standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Seattle office, he found himself reflecting not on the digits that defined his financial empire, but on the legacy he hoped to leave behind.
For decades, Gates had been a driving force behind the digital revolution, transforming Microsoft from a garage startup into a trillion-dollar behemoth. But as the years passed, his focus had shifted. The bright, young tech genius had matured into a philanthropist deeply concerned about the state of the world – and the clock was ticking.
“I’ve made more money than I could ever spend,” he wrote in a recent blog post, echoing the words of his inspiration, Andrew Carnegie, a titan of the Gilded Age. “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.”
With this resolve, Gates made a stunning announcement: he would double his charitable giving to a staggering $200 billion over the next 20 years. It was a commitment as bold as any in the tech world, and it came at a critical moment. Governments around the world, including the United States, were slashing foreign aid budgets, leaving countless lives at risk.
Gates knew that no single philanthropist – not even one with his vast fortune – could fill the gap left by these cuts. In his blog, he warned of the dangers ahead: “The United States, United Kingdom, France, and other countries around the world are cutting their aid budgets by tens of billions of dollars. And no philanthropic organization – even one the size of the Gates Foundation – can make up the gulf in funding that’s emerging right now.”
The stakes were high. Gates pointed to data showing that these cuts could leave a million children with severe acute malnutrition untreated and potentially lead to 166,000 additional deaths from malaria in the coming years.
Yet, his tone remained hopeful. Gates believed that a future without extreme poverty, without preventable child deaths, without the devastation of malaria and malnutrition, was still within reach – if the world’s wealthiest would step up.
This sense of urgency pushed Gates to take aim at his one-time tech rival and now the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. In a candid interview with the Financial Times, Gates didn’t hold back. He criticized Musk for his role in cutting U.S. foreign aid through the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, which effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said, his voice tinged with the frustration of a man who had spent decades trying to solve the world’s biggest problems, only to watch others undermine that progress.
Despite their differences, Gates and Musk do share one significant connection – both are signatories of the Giving Pledge, a commitment founded by Gates, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett in 2010. The pledge calls on billionaires to give away the majority of their wealth either during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Gates, however, expressed doubt about Musk’s commitment to the cause. “The Giving Pledge – an unusual aspect of it is that you can wait until you die and still fulfill it. So who knows? He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” Gates said, adding with a pointed nod to recent events, “but his track record so far isn’t exactly inspiring.”
As he prepares to part with “virtually all” of his wealth, Gates has set a firm timeline for his foundation’s closure, aiming to wind it down by 2045. By then, he hopes to have made a lasting dent in the world’s most pressing challenges, transforming the billions he once accumulated into a legacy of hope, progress, and lives saved.
In the end, Gates seems to be embracing a lesson that even his billions can’t buy – the understanding that true wealth lies not in what you have, but in what you give.