Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates have donated a whopping $20 billion to their Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, their largest-ever gift, they announced on Wednesday. The massive donation brings the foundation’s total endowment to $70 billion.
“The great crises of our time require all of us to do more,” Bill Gates declared, sharing his hope that the mammoth pile of money might “mitigate some of the suffering people are facing right now and help fulfill the foundation’s vision to give every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life.”
While Gates has been a ubiquitous media presence since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, very publicly pouring enormous sums of money into vaccine development, he expressed concern that the next few years could reverse all of the foundation’s recent accomplishments. The billionaire lamented that the pandemic, soaring inflation across world economies, the conflict in Ukraine, and climate change had congealed into a particularly troublesome set of circumstances that must be met with muscular humanitarian aid.