Conventional wisdom tells us all good things must come to an end. And that’s what the Gates Foundation is preparing for. Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates told Fortune first about their plans to shutter their $86 billion charitable foundation in 2045. (French Gates is no longer part of the foundation, having stepped down in 2024 from her role following the couple’s divorce. She now runs her own foundation, Pivotal Philanthropies, focused on gender equality and global health.)
This year, the Gates Foundation will spend a record $9 billion and cut as many as 500 staff jobs during the next five years as the world’s largest private foundation plans to shutter. The foundation’s motivation for its move is to accelerate giving to global health, poverty, and education, helping beneficiaries take ambitious bets now rather than maintaining operations indefinitely. These moves underscore how one of the defining philanthropic institutions of this century is reconfiguring for its sunsetting era.
