Bill Gates says his Foundation will close in 2045 and decries Musk for USAID cuts | Bill Gates | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/08/bill-gates-foundation-wealth-musk-doge an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Gates condemned the sudden funding cuts to USAID by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying the cuts had led to life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses, and could result in the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said.
Gates, 69, told the Financial Times that Musk had cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza province, Mozambique, which he said was working to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to babies, based on the mistaken belief that the US was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East.
In a separate interview with the New York Times also published on Thursday, Gates said that Musk put USAID “in the wood chipper, because he didn’t go to a party that weekend”.
The Times asked Gates about Musk’s commitment to The Giving Pledge – a philanthropic commitment launched by Gates, along with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett. The pledge, which Musk signed in 2012, encourages wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to charitable causes during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Gates told the Times that an “unusual aspect” of the pledge is that “you can wait until you die and still fulfill it.”
“So who knows?” Gates said, Musk “could go on to be a great philanthropist”.
“In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children” Gates continued.
Gates also told the Times that given the various cuts imposed by the Trump administration, he expected childhood mortality to go up by a million additional deaths a year.
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https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41fed-
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-foundation-closing-2045.html