Bill Gates Accuses Elon Musk of ‘Killing Children’ by Cutting Foreign Aid

In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest man, a distinction he once held, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk at least twice in the past week of “killing” children in the world’s poorest countries by cutting foreign aid under the Trump administration. Mr. Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, assailed Mr. Musk for the actions he has taken as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency during interviews with The New York Times Magazine and The Financial Times. He said that Mr. Musk bore responsibility for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that Mr. Gates argued had undermined decades of progress fighting diseases such as measles, H.I.V. and polio. In a wide-ranging interview with The Times Magazine last week, Mr. Gates said that Mr. Musk had put the U.S.A.I.D. in “the wood chipper,” a direct reference to remarks made in February by Mr. Musk on social media gloating about cuts to the agency. Mr. Gates questioned whether Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, would uphold his commitment to what is known as the Giving Pledge — a nonbinding commitment to give away at least half of one’s wealth to charity — which Mr. Musk signed in 2012. “He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” Mr. Gates told the magazine. “In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.” His criticism was timed around an announcement by Mr. Gates that the Gates Foundation, which turned 25 on Thursday, would wind down its work over the next 20 years. He pledged to give an additional $200 billion to charity during that time, effectively spending down his personal fortune. Mr. Gates used more scathing language in an interview published on Thursday by The Financial Times. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he said. In a statement on Thursday, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, defended Mr. Musk’s role in the administration and appeared to take a swipe at Mr. Gates. “Elon Musk is a patriot working to fulfill President Trump’s mission to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse,” the statement said. “Backbenchers should celebrate the selfless efforts of America’s most innovative entrepreneur, who is dedicating time to support American taxpayers and hold Washington accountable to the people of this great nation.”

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), Gates became then the youngest ever billionaire in 1987, at age 31. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$113 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world.

Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests. In 1973, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he took classes including Math 55 and graduate level computer science courses, but he dropped out in 1975 to co-found and lead Microsoft. He served as its CEO for the next 25 years and also became president and chairman of the board when the company incorporated in 1981. Succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer in 2000, he transitioned to chief software architect, a position he held until 2008. He stepped down as chairman of the board in 2014 and became technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, a position he still holds. He resigned from the board in 2020.

Over time, Gates has reduced his role at Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic work with the Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization. Focusing on areas including health, education, and poverty alleviation, Gates became known for his efforts to eradicate transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. Gates and his then-wife Melinda French Gates co-chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation until 2024, when the latter resigned following the couple's divorce; the foundation was subsequently renamed, with Gates as its sole chair.

Gates is founder and chairman of several other companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy. In 2010, he and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half their wealth to philanthropy. Named as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine in 1999, he has received numerous other honors and accolades, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded jointly to him and French Gates in 2016 for their philanthropic work. The subject of several documentary films, he published the first of three planned memoirs, Source Code: My Beginnings, in 2025.