Tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have pledged to give away billions through the 'Giving Pledge' — here's where the money is going by Peter Kotecki on Jul 30, 2018, 11:32 AM Advertisement
 Bill Gates has held the title of richest person in the world many times since 1995, recently falling to second place behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Over the past two decades, Gates and his wife, Melinda, have spent much of their money on charity, encouraging other billionaires to follow in their footsteps by signing the Giving Pledge. The Gates couple launched the pledge with Warren Buffett in 2010, asking signatories to donate a majority of their wealth to charity either during their lifetime or in their will. In the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's annual letter from this year, Gates wrote that he and his wife discussed spending a lot of time on philanthropy before they even got married. "We think that's a basic responsibility of anyone with a lot of money," Gates wrote. "Once you've taken care of yourself and your children, the best use of extra wealth is to give it back to society." This is how Gates and other billionaires in the tech industry spend the money they pledged to donate: SEE ALSO: The billionaire 'Giving Pledge' signed by Bill Gates and Elon Musk could soon be worth up to $600 billion SEE ALSO: 14 more billionaires just joined Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in pledging to give away most of their money Bill and Melinda Gates have donated billions since launching the Giving Pledge.  Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his philanthropist wife, Melinda, have donated more than $36 billion through their foundation to fund programs related to global health, education, emergency relief, poverty, and more. Since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched in 2000, the philanthropists have donated about $2 billion to fight malaria. And in 2014, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the foundation pledged more than $50 million to help fight the virus. The foundation has also donated $75 million to create the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network, which investigates childhood deaths in developing countries. In 2016, Bill Gates and other philanthropists pledged to donate $100 million toward eliminating malnutrition in Nigeria. Bill and Melinda also pledged $38 million in grant money to a Japanese pharmaceutical company, which aimed to develop a low-cost polio vaccine. Melinda Gates has spearheaded an initiative to advance opportunities for women around the world, from expanding the availability of contraception to raising awareness of "time poverty," the concept that hours of unpaid work like household chores rob women of their potential. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also pledged $80 million to support programs that advance gender equality and to gather data on the worldwide gender pay gap.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares to charity.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2015 that he intends to give away 99% of his Facebook shares — then valued at $45 billion — during his lifetime. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were some of the first people to sign the Giving Pledge in 2010, and they have focused their philanthropic efforts on education and medical research. Before the 2015 announcement, they had already donated more than $1.6 billion toward philanthropic causes, including $25 million to the CDC Foundation for fighting the Ebola virus. They have also donated $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital — which has since been named after Zuckerberg — through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. In an effort to improve public education, Zuckerberg and Chan decided in 2014 to donate $120 million to schools in the Bay Area. Four years earlier, they had pledged $100 million to the public school system in Newark, New Jersey. Through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which was founded in December 2015 to advance the couple's goals in healthcare and education, the pair also pledged to donate at least $3 billion over the next decade to "cure all disease" by the end of the 21st century.
Larry Ellison focuses on medical research and education in his giving.  Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison, who signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, has donated millions to educational and healthcare causes through the Lawrence Ellison Foundation. In a letter announcing his participation in the pledge, Ellison wrote that he has given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education, and he intends to donate billions more in the future. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ellison's net worth is currently $55.3 billion. Among his donations, Ellison has given $200 million to cancer research and $100 million toward ending polio.
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