Bill Gates says 2025 was a wake-up call.
After spending decades funding global health, education, and climate initiatives through the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft co-founder watched major foreign aid contracts get cut—moves he argues could have deadly consequences for the world’s most vulnerable children.
Gates has been sharply critical of the cost-cutting push tied to Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He has warned that reduced support could lead to preventable deaths, including among children—an assertion Musk publicly challenged him to substantiate.
In his annual letter this year, Gates struck a tone that was both hopeful and blunt.
“I believe the world will keep improving—but it is harder to see that today than it has been in a long time,” he wrote.
What troubles him most, he says, is a reversal in a key measure of human progress: child mortality.
Gates noted that deaths among children under five fell rapidly for 25 years—faster than at any other point in modern history. But in 2025, he says, the trend reversed for the first time this century, rising from 4.6 million in 2024 to 4.8 million in 2025. He attributes that increase to weaker support from richer countries to poorer ones.
A recent warning from the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Report underscores that concern. According to modelling based on data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an additional 12.5 million child deaths could occur by 2045 if development assistance for health (including government spending) is reduced by 20% from 2024 levels.
Still, Gates insists he hasn’t abandoned optimism—especially because of what he believes artificial intelligence can accelerate.
“Friends and colleagues often ask me how I stay optimistic in an era with so many challenges and so much polarization,” he wrote. “My answer is this: I am still an optimist because I see what innovation accelerated by artificial intelligence will bring.”
But he also placed a time limit on that hope.
“The next five years will be difficult as we try to get back on track and work to scale up new lifesaving tools,” Gates wrote, adding that he doesn’t believe the world will “slide back into the Dark Ages,” even if the near-term path is rough.
Looking further ahead, he argued that a turnaround is still possible: that within the next decade, the world can recover lost ground—and even move into a period of unusually fast progress.
Filling the funding hole
Part of Gates’ argument is that private wealth will have to play a bigger role if public funding continues to shrink.
In 2025, Gates announced what he described as a $200 billion “moonshot”: donating “virtually all [his] wealth”—about $100 billion—to his foundation. He framed it as the largest philanthropic commitment in modern history, with one major condition: the money—made up of the foundation’s current endowment plus projected growth—must be spent within 20 years.
Gates said the plan reflects a long-standing direction rather than a sudden shift. In 2010, he, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and Berkshire Hathaway co-founder Warren Buffett launched the Giving Pledge, a public commitment for the ultra-wealthy to give away significant portions of their fortunes. Since then, it has drawn signatures from donors such as Mackenzie Scott and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
Now, as governments pull back, Gates is openly urging other wealthy individuals to step in more aggressively.
“This idea of treating others as you wish to be treated does not just apply to rich countries giving aid,” he wrote. “It must also include philanthropy from the wealthy to help those in need—both domestically and globally—which should grow rapidly in a world with a record number of billionaires and even centibillionaires.”
He pointed to an Oxfam report released in January 2025 that found the number of billionaires rose in 2024 to 2,769, up from 2,565 the year before. The report also projected that at least five people could reach trillionaire status within about a decade.
Gates argued that, while aid budgets may not rebound quickly, restoring at least part of the lost funding is urgent.
“I know cuts won’t be reversed overnight, even though aid represented less than 1% of GDP even in the most generous countries,” he wrote. “But it is critical that we restore some of the funding.”
