Gates Foundation pledges $1 billion to widen AI access
Gates says AI will be either the greatest equalizer or the worst source of injustice. His foundation will spend $1 billion in two years.
The pledge
Alongside its annual Goalkeepers report, published on September 15, the Gates Foundation announced it will spend $1 billion over two years to widen access to AI. The report tracks progress on the development goals the United Nations set for 2030.
Where the money goes
- Education tools: about $400 million.
- Health: about $400 million.
- Farming practices for smallholder farmers: about $100 million.
- Datasets for training models in local languages: about $100 million.
What Gates said
Gates urged tech companies and world leaders to act now so that AI does not deepen inequality. In his view AI will be either "the greatest equalizer" or "the worst source of injustice". He warned that the technology can also enable fraud, disinformation, surveillance, cyberattacks and bioterrorism. Gates acknowledged his financial ties to the tech industry; his pledge to give 99 percent of his wealth to the foundation stands.
Foundation CEO Mark Suzman acknowledged a challenging period with the US government, saying: "We haven't given up on the U.S."
Why it matters
Large language models tend to be weaker in languages with little training data. Our token explainer shows why Turkish text uses more tokens; the problem is far bigger for languages with fewer resources. The foundation's share for language data is a small part of the total, but it targets that gap directly.