Founder of the company Microsoft Bill Gates has announced that he intends to give away 99 percent of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.
Gates said he would accelerate the distribution of funds from his foundation, planning to end its operations in 2045.
"People will say many things about me when I die, but I am determined that the phrase 'he died rich' will not be one of them," the 69-year-old multibillionaire wrote in a blog post on May 8.
Gates said his eponymous foundation has already given $100 billion (more than 89 billion euros) to health and development projects and expects to spend another $200 billion (more than 178 billion euros), depending on markets and inflation, over the next two decades.
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U post on his blog, Gates cited tycoon Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth," which argues that wealthy people have a duty to give back their wealth to society.
"A man who dies so rich dies disgraced," he wrote, quoting Carnegie.
His latest promise is to accelerate charitable giving.
In the beginning, he and his ex-wife Melinda planned for the Gates Foundation to continue operating after their deaths.
Despite giving away 99 percent of his wealth, Gates could still remain a billionaire because, according to Bloomberg, the Microsoft founder is the fifth richest man in the world.
In the post, he also shared a timeline of his own wealth showing his current net worth of $108 billion and a large hand-drawn arrow descending near zero in 2045.
Gates also wrote that the foundation would withdraw funds from the budget to donate $200 billion.
Watch the video: Who is Melinda Gates?
Together with By Paul Allen, Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company has since become a dominant force in computer software and other technology industries.
Gates gradually withdrew from the company throughout this century, resigning as CEO in 2000 and as chairman in 2014.
The multibillionaire said he was inspired to give away the money by investor Warren Buffett and other philanthropists, but critics of his foundation say Gates is using its charitable status to avoid taxes and has too much influence over the global healthcare system.
In the announcement, he outlined three main goals of his foundation:
- eliminating preventable diseases that lead to maternal and child deaths
- eliminating infectious diseases, such as malaria and measles
- eliminating poverty for hundreds of millions of people
Gates criticized the US, UK and France for cutting foreign aid budgets.
"It is unclear whether the world's richest countries will continue to stand up for their poor people," he wrote.
"But what we can guarantee is that the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries lift themselves out of poverty."
He was more scathing in an interview with the Financial Times, accusing Tesla CEO and head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk of being personally responsible for the deaths of children due to... US budget cuts for help, as well as Dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
"The image of the richest man in the world killing the poorest children in the world is not pretty," Gates said.
The multibillionaire also raised the issue of canceled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which US President Donald Trump falsely claimed was funding condoms "for Hamas" in the Gaza Strip.
Elon Musk later admitted that the claim was false and said that he would "make mistakes," but the cost reduction continued.
"I would like [Musk] to go and meet children with HIV because he has cut his cash handouts," Gates told the Financial Times.
The BBC has contacted Elon Musk for comment.
The Gates Foundation is a donor to BBC Media Action, the BBC's charitable arm, which operates separately from the corporation's news operations.
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