Bill Gates issues a warning.

The billionaire warned that many children would be at risk amid cuts in government aid and appealed for support from other billionaires.

Bill Gates has donated almost his entire fortune to his charitable foundation. Photo: Bloomberg .

The year 2025 did not unfold as Bill Gates had hoped. With the Trump administration cutting numerous foreign aid contracts, he could only stand by and watch as a philanthropist.

The Microsoft founder strongly criticized this policy, largely implemented under the Department for Government Effectiveness (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk. He warned that such actions could directly lead to the deaths of children. Tesla CEO Elon Musk subsequently demanded evidence to support this claim.

In this year's annual letter, the founder of the Gates Foundation believes the world will continue to get better. However, he also acknowledges that, at the present time, this is harder to see than at any time in a very long time.

What angered him most was the increase in the mortality rate of children under 5 years old in the past year. Over the past 25 years, this number had decreased faster than at any other time in history. But by 2025, for the first time this century, it will rise again to 200,000 cases compared to 2024.

“This increase stems from wealthy nations cutting back on aid to poorer countries,” Gates asserted. Last month, based on its own analytical models using data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers report stated that the world could see an additional 12.5 million child deaths by 2045 if health aid is cut by 20% compared to 2024 levels.

In 2025, Gates announced a $200 billion “moon bet.” He will donate almost his entire fortune, approximately $100 billion, to the Gates Foundation.

This is the largest philanthropic commitment in modern history, and it comes with conditions. The entire amount, including existing funds and projected growth, must be disbursed within the next 20 years.

Gates' intentions were clear many years ago. In 2010, he and his then-wife Melinda French Gates, along with Warren Buffett, co-founder of Berkshire Hathaway, launched the Giving Pledge.

All three publicly pledged to encourage the ultra-wealthy to donate a significant portion of their assets to charity. Since then, the initiative has been endorsed by many prominent figures, including Mackenzie Scott and Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb.

In an effort to fill the gap left by government budget cuts, Gates is calling on other wealthy philanthropists to join forces. He believes in treating others the way you would want to be treated, and argues that not only wealthy nations, but also the ultra-wealthy globally, need to do the same.

"That needs to be rapidly expanded in a world that is seeing record numbers of billionaires, even those with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets," he wrote.

An Oxfam report on billionaires, published in January 2025, indicated that the number of global billionaires increased to 2,769 in 2024, compared to 2,565 the previous year. The report also predicted that at least five more individuals will reach trillion-dollar net worth within the next decade.

Gates said he understood that the cuts wouldn't be reversed overnight. "In fact, aid is even less than 1% of GDP in the most generous countries. But it's vital that we restore at least some of that funding," the billionaire said.

Source: https://znews.vn/bill-gates-canh-bao-post1618568.html