I feel like I’m always learning, but I really go into serious learning mode when I’m starting a new project. In the early days of Microsoft, I read a ton about technology companies, and as I was starting the Gates Foundation, I researched the history of American philanthropy.

Writing my memoir Source Code, which came out earlier this year, was no different: I thought about what I could draw on from the best memoirs I’ve read.

So for this year’s Summer Books, I want to share a few of them. With the exception of Nicholas Kristof’s Chasing Hope, I read all of these before finishing Source Code—in fact I read Katharine Graham’s Personal History years before I even decided to start writing. (Nick’s book is so good that I wanted to share it anyway.)

You won’t find a direct correlation between any of these books and Source Code. But I think it has shades of Bono’s vulnerability about his own challenges, Tara Westover’s evolving view of her parents, and Trevor Noah’s sense as a kid that he didn’t quite fit in.

In any case, I hope you can find something that interests you on this list. Memoirs are a good reminder that people have countless interesting stories to tell about their lives.

Personal History, by Katharine Graham. I met Kay Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, on July 5, 1991—the same day I met Warren Buffett—and we became good friends. I loved hearing Kay talk about her remarkable life: taking over the Post at a time when few women were in leadership positions like that, standing up to President Nixon to protect the paper’s reporting on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, negotiating the end to a pressman’s strike, and much more. This thoughtful memoir is a good reminder that great leaders can come from unexpected places.

Chasing Hope, by Nicholas Kristof. In 1997, Nick Kristof wrote an article that changed the course of my life. It was about the huge number of children in poor countries who were dying from diarrhea—and it helped me decide what I wanted to focus my philanthropic giving on. I’ve been following Nick’s work ever since, and we’ve stayed in touch. He’s reported from more than 150 countries, covering war, poverty, health, and human rights. In this terrific memoir, Nick writes about how he stays optimistic about the world despite everything he’s seen. His book made me think: The world would be better off with more Nick Kristofs.

Educated, by Tara Westover. Tara grew up in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho, raised by parents who believed that doomsday was coming and that the family should interact with the outside world as little as possible. Eventually she broke away from her parents—a process that felt like a much more extreme version of what I went through as a kid, and what I think a lot of people go through: At some point in your childhood, you go from thinking your parents know everything to seeing them as adults with limitations. Tara beautifully captures that process of self-discovery in this unforgettable memoir.

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah. Back in 2017, I said this memoir shows how the former Daily Show host’s “approach has been honed over a lifetime of never quite fitting in.” I also grew up feeling like I didn’t quite fit in at times, although Trevor has a much stronger claim to the phrase than I do. He was a biracial child in apartheid South Africa, a country where mixed-race relationships were forbidden. He was, as the title says, “born a crime.” In this book, and in his comedy, Trevor uses his outside perspective to his advantage. His outlook transcends borders.

Surrender, by Bono. I’m lucky that my parents were super supportive of my interest in computers—but Bono’s parents had a very different view of his passion for singing. He says his parents basically ignored him, which made him try even harder to get their attention. “The lack of interest of my father … in his son’s voice is not easy to explain, but it might have been crucial.” Bono shows a lot of vulnerability in this surprisingly open memoir, writing about his “need to be needed” and how he learned he’ll never fill his emotional needs by playing for huge crowds. It was a great model for how I could be open about my own challenges in Source Code.

If you’re a big reader, you can probably point to a book or two that changed the course of your life. For me, it was a 1997 New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof about diarrhea, which was killing three million kids a year.

At the time, I had wealth—and knew I planned to give it away—but no clear mission. Nick’s article gave me one. I faxed it to my dad with a note: “Maybe we can do something about this.”

That ended up setting the direction for what became the Gates Foundation. It didn’t just give us a what—it gave us a how. Nick’s reporting showed us that the biggest challenge in global health isn’t always discovering new breakthroughs. Often, it’s making sure the tools we already have—vaccines, medicines, bed nets, or oral rehydration therapies for rotavirus—reach every child, no matter where they’re born.

Reading Nick’s new memoir, Chasing Hope, brought me back to that moment and showed me how it fit into the bigger story of his life. The book is a deeply personal account of a life spent documenting injustice and refusing to look away, whether it’s genocide in Darfur, refugee camps in Sudan, or the streets of his hometown in rural Oregon.

Nick’s impulse to go where the suffering is, and to make people care, has defined his career. He’s reported from more than 150 countries, covering war, poverty, health, and human rights. He and his longtime collaborator and wife, Sheryl WuDunn, won a Pulitzer Prize for their work. Together and individually, they’ve brought injustices around the world into view for millions of readers.

But Chasing Hope isn’t just a greatest-hits collection of his past reporting. It’s the story of how someone becomes Nick Kristof. He writes about growing up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon, driving tractors as a teenager, and nearly becoming a lawyer before deciding on journalism. He also reflects on the toll his career has taken on him, his family, and his capacity for hope.

I’ve known Nick for many years now, and I’ve admired his work since that 1997 rotavirus column. On paper, we don’t seem all that similar. He’s a journalist, I’m a technologist; he tells stories, I talk numbers. But reading Chasing Hope, I was struck by what we have in common: growing up in the Pacific Northwest, learning about the value of service from our parents, thinking globally.

We both attended Harvard and left early—me because I dropped out, him because he graduated in three years before heading to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. But neither of us ever stopped learning. I think we both believe the world’s pretty interesting if you remain a student.

Nick’s curiosity didn’t come out of nowhere, and neither did his sense of purpose. His mother was an art history professor and a civic leader who helped influence local politics. His father, a political science professor who fled both Nazism and communism, believed deeply in education and the responsibilities that come with freedom. That kind of upbringing left a mark on him and shaped the kind of journalist he became.

Over decades, he’s built a career reporting on crises that are often ignored because they happen in far-off places, far from centers of power. In Chasing Hope, he recounts his experiences chronicling river blindness in Ethiopia, maternal mortality in Cameroon, and malaria in Cambodia. Through the foundation, I mobilize science, data, and funding to address many of the same global challenges Nick reports on. Our approaches are different, but the underlying questions we ask (and try to answer) are the same: Why are some lives valued less than others? And how can we use the tools we have—information, resources, attention—to close that gap?

Nick has an admirable commitment to nuance, especially when it comes to hard subjects like China. Nick lived there for years, speaks Mandarin, and understands the country in a way most Western commentators don’t. I’ve always appreciated his ability to go beyond the headlines—and focus not just on what’s going wrong, but on what’s changing and why it matters.

Nick is also an optimist, which might sound strange given the kinds of suffering he writes about. But his work is grounded in a belief I share: The right data—or the right story—can move people to act. As Nick puts it, “A central job of a journalist is to get people to care about some problem that may seem remote.” People, when given the chance, want to make things better. Progress, while never guaranteed, is possible.

That optimism feels especially important, if increasingly difficult, right now. Isolationism is on the rise around the world, and governments are cutting back on foreign aid at the very moment when we should be doing more, not less. Millions of lives are at stake. Nick’s work reminds us what’s possible when we care about people beyond our own borders—and what happens when we don’t.

Chasing Hope made me think a lot about what kind of person chooses to run toward the hardest problems—and keep going back until they’re solved. It also made me think the world would be a much better place if there were more Nick Kristofs. In the meantime, we’re lucky to have this one.

I’ve always prided myself on my ability to teach myself things. Whenever I don’t know a lot about something, I’ll read a textbook or watch an online course until I do.

I thought I was pretty good at teaching myself—until I read Tara Westover’s memoir Educated. Her ability to learn on her own blows mine right out of the water. I was thrilled to sit down with her recently to talk about the book.

Tara was raised in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about the government. He believed doomsday was coming, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible. As a result, she didn’t step foot in a classroom until she was 17, and major medical crises went untreated (her mother suffered a brain injury in a car accident and never fully recovered).

Because Tara and her six siblings worked at their father’s junkyard from a young age, none of them received any kind of proper homeschooling. She had to teach herself algebra and trigonometry and self-studied for the ACT, which she did well enough on to gain admission to Brigham Young University. Eventually, she earned her doctorate in intellectual history from Cambridge University. (Full disclosure: she was a Gates Scholar, which I didn’t even know until I reached that part of the book.)

Educated is an amazing story, and I get why it’s spent so much time on the top of the New York Times bestseller list. It reminded me in some ways of the Netflix documentary Wild, Wild Country, which I recently watched. Both explore people who remove themselves from society because they have these beliefs and knowledge that they think make them more enlightened. Their belief systems benefit from their separateness, and you’re forced to be either in or out.

But unlike Wild, Wild Country—which revels in the strangeness of its subjects—Educated doesn’t feel voyeuristic. Tara is never cruel, even when she’s writing about some of her father’s most fringe beliefs. It’s clear that her whole family, including her mom and dad, is energetic and talented. Whatever their ideas are, they pursue them.

Of the seven Westover siblings, three of them—including Tara—left home, and all three have earned Ph.D.s. Three doctorates in one family would be remarkable even for a more “conventional” household. I think there must’ve been something about their childhood that gave them a degree of toughness and helped them persevere. Her dad taught the kids that they could teach themselves anything, and Tara’s success is a testament to that.

I found it fascinating how it took studying philosophy and history in school for Tara to trust her own perception of the world. Because she never went to school, her worldview was entirely shaped by her dad. He believed in conspiracy theories, and so she did, too. It wasn’t until she went to BYU that she realized there were other perspectives on things her dad had presented as fact. For example, she had never heard of the Holocaust until her art history professor mentioned it. She had to research the subject to form her own opinion that was separate from her dad’s.

Her experience is an extreme version of something everyone goes through with their parents. At some point in your childhood, you go from thinking they know everything to seeing them as adults with limitations. I’m sad that Tara is estranged from a lot of her family because of this process, but the path she’s taken and the life she’s built for herself are truly inspiring.

When you meet her, you don’t have any impression of all the turmoil she’s gone through. She’s so articulate about the traumas of her childhood, including the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of one brother. I was impressed by how she talks so candidly about how naïve she once was—most of us find it difficult to talk about our own ignorance.

I was especially interested to hear her take on polarization in America. Although it’s not a political book, Educated touches on a number of the divides in our country: red states versus blue states, rural versus urban, college-educated versus not. Since she’s spent her whole life moving between these worlds, I asked Tara what she thought. She told me she was disappointed in what she called the “breaking of charity”—an idea that comes from the Salem witch trials and refers to the moment when two members of the same group break apart and become different tribes.

“I worry that education is becoming a stick that some people use to beat other people into submission or becoming something that people feel arrogant about,” she said. “I think education is really just a process of self-discovery—of developing a sense of self and what you think. I think of [it] as this great mechanism of connecting and equalizing.”

Tara’s process of self-discovery is beautifully captured in Educated. It’s the kind of book that I think everyone will enjoy, no matter what genre you usually pick up. She’s a talented writer, and I suspect this book isn’t the last we’ll hear from her. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

I’m a longtime fan of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. When Jon Stewart stepped down as host in 2015, I was sad to see him go. I was also worried for his replacement, Trevor Noah, a South African comedian. Stewart’s style is so unusual that I didn’t see how anyone could fill his shoes—especially someone like Noah, who describes himself as an outsider. As popular as Noah was in South Africa, I didn’t know whether his humor would connect with American audiences.

I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Millions of viewers—myself included—are tuning in to The Daily Show because Noah’s show is every bit as good as Stewart’s. His humor has a lightness and optimism that’s refreshing to watch. What’s most impressive is how he uses his outside perspective to his advantage. He’s good at making fun of himself, America, and the rest of the world. His comedy is so universal that it has the power to transcend borders.

Reading Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime, I quickly learned how Noah’s outsider approach has been honed over a lifetime of never quite fitting in. Born to a black South African mother and a white Swiss father in apartheid South Africa, he entered the world as a biracial child in a country where mixed race relationships were forbidden. Noah was not just a misfit, he was (as the title says) “born a crime.”

In South Africa, where race categories are so arbitrary and yet so prominent, Noah never had a group to call his own. As a little boy living under apartheid laws, he couldn’t be seen in public with his white father or his black mother. In public, his father would walk far ahead of him to ensure he wouldn’t be seen with his biracial son. His mother would pose as a maid to make it look like she was just babysitting another family’s child. On the schoolyard, he didn’t fit in with the white kids or the black kids or the kids who were “colored” (the term used in South Africa to describe people of mixed race).

But during his childhood, he quickly discovered that there’s a freedom that comes with being a misfit. A polyglot who speaks English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Tsonga, Tswana, as well as German and Spanish, Noah used his talent for language to bounce from group to group and win acceptance from all of them. One of my favorite stories in the book involves Noah walking down the street when he overhears a group of men speaking in Zulu about how they were plotting to mug “this white guy.” Noah realizes they were referring to him. Noah spins around and announces in perfect Zulu that they should all mug someone together. The Zulu men are startled that Noah speaks Zulu and a tense situation is defused. Noah is immediately accepted as one of their own.

Again and again throughout his childhood, he discovered that language was more powerful than skin color in building connections with other people. “I became a chameleon,” Noah writes. “My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.”

Much of Noah’s story of growing up in South Africa is tragic. His Swiss father moves away. His family is desperately poor. He’s arrested. And in the most shocking moment, his mother is shot by his stepfather. Yet in Noah’s hands, these moving stories are told in a way that will often leave you laughing. His skill for comedy is clearly inherited from his mother. Even after she’s shot in the face, and miraculously survives, she tells her son from her hospital bed to look at the bright side. “’Now you’re officially the best-looking person in the family,’” she jokes.

In fact, Noah’s mother emerges as the real hero of the book. She’s an extraordinary person who is fiercely independent and raised her son to be the same way. Her greatest gift was to give her son the ability to think for himself and see the world from his own perspective. “If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind,” he writes. Like many fans of Noah’s, I am thankful she did. 

When Paul Hewson was 11, his parents sent him to a Dublin grammar school that happened to have an outstanding boys’ choir. Paul, who later took the nickname Bono, loved singing. His father had a beautiful voice, and Paul thought he might have some of his dad’s talent. But when the principal asked him if he wanted to join the choir, his mom jumped in before he could answer. “Not at all,” she said. “Paul has no interest in singing.”

Bono’s new book, Surrender, is packed with funny, poignant moments like this. Even though I’m a big fan of U2, and Bono and I have become friends over the years—Paul Allen connected us in the early 2000s—a lot of those stories were new to me. I went into this book knowing almost nothing about his anger at his father, the band’s near-breakups, and his discovery that his cousin was actually his half-brother. I didn’t even know that he grew up with a Protestant mom and Catholic dad.

I loved Surrender. You get to observe the band in the process of creating some of their most iconic songs. The book is filled with clever, self-deprecating lines like “Just how effective can a singer with anger issues be in the cause of nonviolence?” And you’ll learn a lot about the challenges he dealt with in his campaigns for debt relief and HIV treatment in Africa. (The Gates Foundation is a major supporter of ONE, the nonprofit that Bono helped start.)

In this passage, he explains how a boy from the suburbs of Dublin became a global phenomenon: “There are only a few routes to making a grandstanding stadium singer out of a small child. You can tell them they’re amazing, that the world needs to hear their voice, that they must not hide their ‘genius under a bushel.’ Or you can just plain ignore them. That might be more effective. The lack of interest of my father, a tenor, in his son’s voice is not easy to explain, but it might have been crucial.” (It also helped that he has, as he later learned from a doctor, freakishly large lung capacity.)

Bono’s loyalty to his bandmates, and their loyalty to him, is pretty incredible. My favorite illustration from the book takes place at a concert in Arizona, when the band was urging the then-governor to uphold the national MLK Day holiday in his state. U2’s security team picked up a credible threat to Bono’s life if the band played their Martin Luther King tribute “Pride (In the Name of Love).” “It wasn’t just melodrama,” he writes, “when I closed my eyes and sort of half kneeled to disguise the fact that I was fearful to sing the rest of the words.” When Bono opened his eyes, he saw that bassist Adam Clayton had moved in front of him to shield him like a Secret Service agent. Fortunately, the threat never materialized.

There’s another factor that explains the band’s tight bonds: They share the same values. All four of them are passionate about fighting poverty and inequity in the world, and they’re also aligned on maintaining their integrity as artists. I learned this the hard way. When Microsoft wanted to license U2’s song “Beautiful Day” for an ad campaign, I joined a call in an attempt to persuade the band to go for the deal. They simply weren’t interested. I admired their commitment.

While Bono never got lost in drugs or alcohol, he acknowledges that stardom gave him a big ego. He also says that he had a “need to be needed.” His key to survival was embracing the concept of spiritual surrender, as the title of the book suggests. He eventually came to see that he’d never fill his emotional needs by playing for huge crowds or being a global advocate. His faith in a higher power helped him a lot. So did his wife, Ali. He writes that when his mom died during his childhood, his home “stopped being a home; it was just a house.” Ali and their four children gave him a home once again.

Bono writes that his surrender is still incomplete. He’s not going to retire anytime soon, which is great news and not just for U2 fans. After the past few years, the field of global health—one of his chief causes—needs an injection of energy and passion. Bono’s unique gifts are perfectly suited to that mission.

I was twenty when I gave my first public speech. It was 1976, Microsoft was almost a year old, and I was explaining software to a room of a few hundred computer hobbyists. My main memory of that time at the podium was how nervous I felt. In the half century since, I’ve spoken to many thousands of people and gotten very comfortable delivering thoughts on any number of topics, from software to work being done in global health, climate change, and the other issues I regularly write about here on Gates Notes.

One thing that isn’t on that list: myself. In the fifty years I’ve been in the public eye, I’ve rarely spoken or written about my own story or revealed details of my personal life. That wasn’t just out of a preference for privacy. By nature, I tend to focus outward. My attention is drawn to new ideas and people that help solve the problems I’m working on. And though I love learning history, I never spent much time looking at my own.  

But like many people my age—I’ll turn 70 this year—several years ago I started a period of reflection. My three children were well along their own paths in life. I’d witnessed the slow decline and death of my father from Alzheimer’s. I began digging through old photographs, family papers, and boxes of memorabilia, such as school reports my mother had saved, as well as printouts of computer code I hadn't seen in decades. I also started sitting down to record my memories and got help gathering stories from family members and old friends. It was the first time I made a concerted effort to try to see how all the memories from long ago might give insight into who I am now.

The result of that process is a book that will be published on Feb. 4: my first memoir, Source Code. You can order it here. (I’m donating my proceeds from the book to the United Way.)

Source Code is the story of the early part of my life, from growing up in Seattle through the beginnings of Microsoft. I share what it was like to be a precocious, sometimes difficult kid, the restless middle child of two dedicated and ambitious parents who didn’t always know what to make of me. In writing the book I came to better understand the people that shaped me and the experiences that led to the creation of a world-changing company.

In Source Code you’ll learn about how Paul Allen and I came to realize that software was going to change the world, and the moment in December 1974 when he burst into my college dorm room with the issue of Popular Electronics that would inspire us to drop everything and start our company. You’ll also meet my extended family, like the grandmother who taught me how to play cards and, along the way, how to think. You’ll meet teachers, mentors, and friends who challenged me and helped propel me in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until much later. 

Some of the moments that I write about, like that Popular Electronics story, are ones I’ve always known were important in my life. But with many of the most personal moments, I only saw how important they were when I considered them from my perspective now, decades later. Writing helped me see the connection between my early interests and idiosyncrasies and the work I would do at Microsoft and even the Gates Foundation.

Some of the stories in the book were hard for me to tell. I was a kid who was out of step with most of my peers, happier reading on my own than doing almost anything else. I was tough on my parents from a very early age. I wanted autonomy and resisted my mother’s efforts to control me. A therapist back then helped me see that I would be independent soon enough and should end the battle that I was waging at home. Part of growing up was understanding certain aspects of myself and learning to handle them better. It’s an ongoing process.

One of the most difficult parts of writing Source Code was revisiting the death of my first close friend when I was 16. He was brilliant, mature beyond his years, and, unlike most people in my life at the time, he understood me. It was my first experience with death up close, and I’m grateful I got to spend time processing the memories of that tragedy.

The need to look into myself to write Source Code was a new experience for me. The deeper I got, the more I enjoyed parsing my past. I’ll continue this journey and plan to cover my software career in a future book, and eventually I’ll write one about my philanthropic work. As a first step, though, I hope you enjoy Source Code.

Microsoft turns 50 years old tomorrow. As we’ve gotten closer to the anniversary, I have found myself reflecting back on the journey that led us to this point—and especially on the people who got us here.

In 1975, Paul Allen and I created Microsoft because we believed in our vision of a computer on every desk and in every home. That vision became a reality long ago, and in the years since, Microsoft has continued to build a future where innovation makes life easier and work more productive. We couldn’t have done it without incredible leaders like Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella. Every single person who has worked at Microsoft over the years is a key part of its success too.

The truth is, for much of my life, I didn’t like to celebrate work milestones. When I was at Microsoft, I would insist we didn’t have time to talk about them. But as I got older, I learned how important it is to celebrate the wins in life. And making it 50 years is a huge cause for celebration.

The coolest code I’ve ever written

Although I am excited to join Steve, Satya, and everyone who helped make the company a success tomorrow in Redmond to celebrate its anniversary, I admit that reaching this milestone feels bittersweet. It’s hard to believe that such a significant piece of my life has been around for a half-century!

It feels like just yesterday that Paul and I were hunched over the PDP-10 in Harvard’s computer lab, writing the code that would become the first product of our new company.

That code remains the coolest code I’ve ever written to this day—and you can see it for yourself at the bottom of this page. 

The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics company called MITS, was a groundbreaking personal computer kit that promised to bring computing power to hobbyists. When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.

At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent. Paul and I knew that creating software that let people program the Altair could revolutionize the way people interacted with these machines. So, we reached out to Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, and told him we had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on. 

There was just one problem: We didn’t. It was time to get to work.

The basics of BASIC

Invented by two Dartmouth College professors in 1964, BASIC was designed to be easy to learn for people with no computer experience. With little study or technical aptitude, a person can write their own software in BASIC—anything from a checkbook-balancing program to a tic-tac-toe game. BASIC was the first language Paul and I learned (and it’s still used today). 

Computer languages like BASIC serve the same purpose as English or any other language. In the same way that you can use English to order a coffee at a café, you can use BASIC to tell a computer to run a program, solve a math problem, or perform some other task. 

Translating BASIC

There is a catch, though: Computers don’t speak BASIC. And the language they do speak is so complex and unintuitive that programming in it is incredibly difficult. To bridge the gap, Paul and I set out to create a BASIC interpreter, which would translate code into instructions the computer understood line by line as the program runs. 

We considered creating a similar tool called a compiler that translates the entire program and then runs it all at once. But we figured the line-by-line approach of an interpreter would be helpful to novice programmers since it would give instant feedback on their code, allowing them to fix any mistakes as they crop up. 

Getting started

Paul and I decided to divide and conquer. We didn’t have the Intel 8080 chip that the Altair computer ran on, so Paul got to work writing a program that would simulate one on Harvard’s PDP-10 mainframe. This allowed us to test our software without needing an actual Altair. Meanwhile, I focused on writing the main code for the program while another friend, Monte Davidoff, worked on a portion called the math package. We coded day and night for the two months to create the software we had said already existed.

Overcoming obstacles

Computer memory back then was expensive. Extra memory for the Altair could easily cost more than the computer itself, so every byte mattered. We thought that if we could fit our BASIC code into just four kilobytes, Altair owners using BASIC could still have enough memory left to run the programs they wrote (and not have to spend a lot of extra money). To meet that constraint, I used various techniques to optimize memory usage, like compact data structures and efficient algorithms. It was a fun challenge, and although Paul and I were stressed about getting Altair BASIC to MITS as quickly as possible, I had a blast figuring out how to make everything fit.

The birth of Microsoft

Finally, after lots of sleepless nights, we were ready to show our BASIC interpreter to Ed Roberts. The demonstration was a success, and MITS agreed to license the software. This was a pivotal moment for Paul and me. Altair BASIC became the first product of our new company, which we decided to call Micro-Soft. (We later dropped the hyphen.) 

You can read more about the origin of Altair BASIC—including about how Paul had to finish part of the code on a flight to Albuquerque—in my memoir Source Code. 

It’s amazing to think about how this one piece of code led to a half century of innovation from Microsoft. Thanks to leaders like Steve and Satya, the company has reached levels of success that Paul and I could only dream of all those years ago in the Harvard computer lab. 

Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was the original source code—and I still get a kick out of seeing it, even all these years later.

DOWNLOAD THE CODE

Look through the original Microsoft source code for yourself. Computer programming has come a long way over the last fifty years, but I’m still super proud of how it turned out.

I was an extremely lucky kid. I was born to great parents who did everything to set me up for success. I grew up in a city I love and still call home, at the dawn of the computer age. And I went to one of two schools in my state—one of a handful in the country—that actually had computer access. These were all strokes of luck that helped shape my future.

But equally important, maybe most important, were the teachers I was fortunate enough to learn from along the way. In my new book, Source Code, I write about many of them. From grade school through college, I had teachers who saw my potential (even when it was buried under bad behavior), gave me real responsibilities, let me learn through experience instead of lectures, and created space for me to explore my passions.

These five brilliant teachers didn’t just teach me subjects; they taught me how to think about the world and what I might accomplish in it. Looking back, I realize how rare this was—and how lucky I was to find it over and over again. 

Blanche Caffiere

Blanche Caffiere entered my life twice—first as my first-grade teacher, and later as my first “boss,” when I was in fourth grade at View Ridge Elementary and she was the librarian. At the time, I was a handful in (and out of) class: energetic, disruptive, constantly lost in my own thoughts. Most teachers and administrators saw me as a problem to be solved. But Mrs. Caffiere saw a problem-solver in me instead. When one of my teachers struggled with how to challenge me and channel my energy, she stepped in and gave me a job as her library assistant. 

“What you need is kind of like a detective,” I said when she tasked me with finding missing books that were lost somewhere in the library. I warmed to the work immediately, roaming the stacks until I found each one. Then Mrs. Caffiere taught me the Dewey Decimal system by having me memorize a clever story about a caveman, so I could figure out where each book belonged. For a kid who loved reading and numbers, it was a dream job. I felt essential. I stayed through recess that first day, showed up early the next morning, and ended up working in the library for the rest of the year.

When my family moved and I had to leave View Ridge Elementary, I was most devastated about leaving my library job. “Who will find the lost books?” I asked. Mrs. Caffiere responded that I could be a library assistant at my new school. She understood that what I needed wasn’t just busy work, but a sense of being valued and trusted with real responsibility. She’d been teaching for nearly forty years when we met, which meant she’d seen every kind of student imaginable. But she had a particular gift for helping those at the extremes—the ones who were struggling or excelling—find their way. I was a little of both, and she certainly helped me find mine.

Paul Stocklin

Paul Stocklin’s eighth-grade math class at Lakeside changed my life in two profound ways, though I couldn’t have known it at the time. First, it was where I met Kent Evans, who would become my best friend and earliest “business” partner before his tragic death in a mountain climbing accident at age 17. Like me, Kent didn’t easily fit into the established cliques at Lakeside. Unlike me, he had a clear vision for his future, which inspired me to start thinking about my own.

It was also in Mr. Stocklin’s class that I first saw a teletype machine—an encounter that would shape my entire future. One morning, Mr. Stocklin led our class down a hall in McAllister House, a white clapboard building at Lakeside that was home to the school’s math department, where we heard an unusual “chug-chug-chug” sound echoing from inside a room. There, we saw something that looked like a typewriter with a rotary telephone dial. Mr. Stocklin explained that it was a teletype machine connected to a computer in California. With it, we could play games and even write our own computer programs—something I’d never thought I’d be able to do myself. That moment opened up a whole new world for me.

There’s a lot more I’ve come to appreciate about Mr. Stocklin, including how much he encouraged an early love of math in me. But it’s undeniable that he changed my life by facilitating two of the most important relationships of my early years: my friendship with Kent, and my introduction to computing. These were gifts from him that I’ll appreciate forever, even though one would end in heartbreak.

Bill Dougall

Bill Dougall embodied what made Lakeside special—he was a World War II Navy pilot and Boeing engineer who brought real-world experience to teaching. Beyond his degrees in engineering and education, he had even studied French literature at the Sorbonne. He was the kind of Renaissance man who took sabbaticals to build windmills in Kathmandu.

As head of Lakeside’s math department, Mr. Dougall was instrumental in bringing computer access to our school, something he and other faculty members pushed for after taking a summer computer class. Even though it was expensive—over $1,000 a year for the terminal and thousands more in computer time—he helped convince the Mothers’ Club to use the proceeds from their annual rummage sale to lease a Teletype ASR-33.

The fascinating thing about Mr. Dougall was that he didn’t actually know much about programming; he exhausted his knowledge within a week. But he had the vision to know it was important and the trust to let us students figure it out. His famous camping trips, a sacred tradition at Lakeside, showed another side of his belief in experiential learning. These treks took students through whatever weather the Pacific Northwest could throw at forty boys and a few intrepid teachers. They taught resilience, teamwork, and problem-solving in a way that no classroom ever could. That was the essence of Mr. Dougall’s teaching philosophy.

Fred Wright

Fred Wright was exactly the kind of teacher we needed in the computer room at Lakeside. He had no practical computer experience, though he’d studied the FORTRAN programming language. But he was relatively young (in his late twenties) and only recently hired, and he intuitively understood that the best way to get students to learn was to let us explore on our own terms. There was no sign-up sheet, no locked door, no formal instruction.  

Instead, Mr. Wright let us figure things out ourselves and trusted that, without his guidance, we’d have to get creative. At some point, a student taped a sign above the door that said “Beware of the Wrath of Fred Wright”—a tongue-in-cheek nod to his laissez-faire oversight of the computer room. Some of the other teachers argued for tighter regulations, worried about what we might be doing in there unsupervised. But even though Mr. Wright occasionally popped in to break up a squabble or listen as someone explained their latest program, for the most part he defended our autonomy.

Officially, he was the adult sponsor of our work at Lakeside. Unofficially, Mr. Wright gave us something invaluable: the space to discover our own potential. That was also his approach to geometry class, where I was his student in tenth grade. I remember him watching with amusement as I powered through problems using algebra instead of geometry. Rather than force me to do it the right way, he let me forge my own path, knowing I’d eventually figure out the more efficient (geometric) solution. 

Daniel Morris 

Dr. Daniel Morris was different from most high school science teachers. With a PhD from Yale and a patent for isolating tryptophan, he was a former industrial chemist who brought real-world expertise to our chemistry classroom. Some might have found it pretentious that he wore a lab coat and drank coffee from a glass beaker, but he earned those rights. I think he also earned the label that I’ve long used to describe him: the world’s greatest chemistry teacher. 

What made Dr. Morris so memorable was his ability to transform the rote memorization that most people associate with chemistry into unifying concepts that explain the world around us. He demystified complex processes by using everyday examples—to teach, for example, why soda stays fizzy if you put the cap back on, or what makes super glue that sticky. The introduction he wrote to his own chemistry textbook captures his teaching style perfectly: “We seem to forget the true foundation stone of science: the belief that the world makes sense.”

Before him, the sciences were subjects I did well in analytically but didn’t much care to practically understand or apply. That wasn’t good enough for Dr. Morris, who gave me a hard time for just getting by with what I already knew. Instead, he forced me into the lab to do experiments; to this day, I trace my love of science back to the demands he put on me to really get chemistry. He’s the reason I decided to take organic chemistry at Harvard—even though the class was mostly pre-med students, and I had no plans to become a doctor. (I got a C, my lowest grade in college, but I don’t think I ever told him.)

Tom Cheatham 

Looking back on my time at Harvard, I’m grateful for Professor Tom Cheatham’s hands-off approach to some of the most hands-on learning I’ve ever done. As director of the Aiken Computation Lab, he made an extraordinary exception by granting me access to the school’s PDP-10 computer—a privilege typically reserved for graduate students and other professors. Back then, Harvard didn’t even have an undergraduate computer science major.  

When we first met, I was an overconfident freshman, practically jumping out of my chair as I pitched him on all my ideas; I remember him taking drags on his Parliament cigarettes as I spoke, seeming pretty uninterested. I later learned that administrative tasks—signing students’ study cards and managing the day-to-day of the lab—were Cheatham’s least favorite parts of his job. Having come to Harvard after years working in industry and government, he was a programmer at heart, designing new computer languages when he wasn’t off meeting with the Department of Defense and securing more funding for the lab.

But he must have seen (and liked) something in me—either my technical experience, my teenage enthusiasm, or both. In my sophomore year, he made another exception and agreed to be my advisor for an engineering independent study to write a computerized baseball game. While I regret that we never formed a closer relationship, Cheatham was clearly in my corner. I knew that then and was reminded of it again recently, when I saw my old college records and learned how he’d defended me when I got in trouble for bringing friends into the lab without permission: It would be a “travesty of justice” if I were forced to withdraw from Harvard, Cheatham told the university’s Administrative Board, adding that he “would be delighted to have BG computing at the Center next year.”

I don’t think I ever properly thanked any of my teachers, including Professor Cheatham, for seeing something in me that I didn’t always see in myself. So many of them passed away before I had the chance. But I am who I am today because of their influence. So in Source Code, I’m sharing their stories and giving credit where it’s due. After all, one brilliant teacher, one mind-blowing class, is enough to change a person’s life. I’m so lucky and grateful to have had many.  

When I first began thinking about how to give away my wealth, I did what I always do when I start a new project: I read a lot of books. I read books about great philanthropists and their foundations to inform my decisions about how exactly to give back. And I read books about global health to help me better understand the problems I wanted to solve.

One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today.

In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that "he died rich" will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.

That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned. I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world. And on December 31, 2045, the foundation will close its doors permanently.

This is a change from our original plans. When Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation in 2000, we included a clause in the foundation’s very first charter: The organization would sunset several decades after our deaths. A few years ago, I began to rethink that approach. More recently, with the input from our board, I now believe we can achieve the foundation’s goals on a shorter timeline, especially if we double down on key investments and provide more certainty to our partners.

During the first 25 years of the Gates Foundation—powered in part by the generosity of Warren Buffett—we gave away more than $100 billion. Over the next two decades, we will double our giving. The exact amount will depend on the markets and inflation, but I expect the foundation will spend more than $200 billion between now and 2045. This figure includes the balance of the endowment and my future contributions. 

This decision comes at a moment of reflection for me. In addition to celebrating the foundation’s 25^th anniversary, this year also marks several other milestones: It would have been the year my dad, who helped me start the foundation, turned 100; Microsoft is turning 50; and I turn 70 in October.

This means that I have officially reached an age when many people are retired. While I respect anyone’s decision to spend their days playing pickleball, that life isn’t quite for me—at least not full time. I’m lucky to wake up every day energized to go to work. And I look forward to filling my days with strategy reviews, meetings with partners, and learning trips for as long as I can.

The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities. I am excited to see how our next chapter continues to move the world closer to a future where everyone everywhere has the chance to live a healthy and productive life.

Planning for the next 20 years

I am deeply proud of what we have accomplished in our first 25 years.

We were central to the creation of Gavi and the Global Fund, both of which transformed the way the world procures and delivers lifesaving tools like vaccines and anti-retrovirals. Together, these two groups have saved more than 80 million lives so far. Along with Rotary International, we have been a key partner in reviving the effort to eradicate polio. We supported the creation of a new vaccine for rotavirus that has helped reduce the number of children who die from diarrhea each year by 75 percent. Every step of the way, we brought together other foundations, non-profits, governments, multilateral agencies, and the private sector as partners to solve big problems—as we will continue to do for the next twenty years.

Over the next twenty years, the Gates Foundation will aim to save and improve as many lives as possible. By accelerating our giving, my hope is we can put the world on a path to ending preventable deaths of moms and babies and lifting millions of people out of poverty. I believe we can leave the next generation better off and better prepared to fight the next set of challenges.

The work of making the world better is and always has been a group effort. I am proud of everything the foundation accomplished during its first 25 years, but I also know that none of it would have been possible without fantastic partners.

Progress depends on so many people around the globe: Brilliant scientists who discover new breakthroughs. Private companies that step up to develop life-saving tools and medicines. Other philanthropists whose generosity fuels progress. Healthcare workers who make sure innovations get to the people who need them. Governments, nonprofits, and multilateral organizations that build new systems to bring solutions to scale. Each part plays an essential role in driving the world forward, and it is an honor to support their efforts.

Of course, although the Gates Foundation is by far the most significant piece of my giving, it is not the only way I give back. I have invested considerable time and money into both energy innovation and Alzheimer’s R&D. Today’s announcement does not change my approach to those areas.

Expanding access to affordable energy is essential to building a future where every person can both survive and thrive. The bulk of my spending in this area is through Breakthrough Energy, which invests in companies with promising ideas to generate more energy while reducing emissions. I also started a company called TerraPower to bring safe, clean, next-generation nuclear technology to life. Both of these ventures will earn profits if successful, and I will reinvest any money I make through them back in the foundation, as I already do today.

I support a number of efforts to fight Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias. Alzheimer’s is a growing crisis here in the United States, and as life expectancies go up, it threatens to become a massive burden to both families and healthcare systems around the world. Fortunately, scientists are currently making amazing progress to slow and even stop the progress of this disease. I expect to keep supporting their efforts as long as it’s necessary.

The success in both areas will determine exactly how much money is given to the foundation since any profits they earn will be part of my overall gift.

What the Gates Foundation hopes to accomplish

Over the next twenty years, the foundation will work together with our partners to make as much progress towards our vision of a more equitable world as possible.

The truth is, there have never been more opportunities to help people live healthier, more prosperous lives. Advances in technology are happening faster than ever, especially with artificial intelligence on the rise. Even with all the challenges that the world faces, I’m optimistic about our ability to make progress—because each breakthrough is yet another chance to make someone’s life better.

Over the next twenty years, the foundation’s funding will be guided by three key aspirations:

In 1990, 12 million children under the age of 5 died. By 2019, that number had fallen to 5 million. I believe the world possesses the knowledge to cut that figure in half again and get even closer to ending all preventable child deaths.

We now understand the essential role nutrition—and especially the gut microbiome—plays in not only helping kids survive but thrive. We’ve made huge advances in maternal health, making sure that new and expectant mothers have the support they need to deliver healthy babies. We have new, life-saving vaccines and medicines, and we know how to get them to the people who need them most thanks to organizations like Gavi and the Global Fund. The innovation is there, the ability to measure progress is stronger than ever, and the world has the tools it needs to put all children on a good path.

Today, the list of human diseases the world has eradicated has just one entry: smallpox. Within the next couple years, I expect to add polio and Guinea worm to the list. (When we eradicate the latter, it will be a testament to the late President Jimmy Carter’s leadership.) I’m optimistic that, by the time the foundation shuts down, we can also add malaria and measles. Malaria is particularly tricky, but we’ve got lots of new tools in the pipeline, including ways of reducing mosquito populations. That is probably the key tool that, as it gets perfected and approved and rolled out, gives us a chance to eradicate malaria.

In 2000, the year that we started the foundation, 1.8 million people died from HIV/AIDS. By 2023, advances in treatment and preventatives cut that number to 630,000. I believe that figure will be reduced dramatically in the decades ahead, thanks to incredible new innovations in the pipeline—including a single-shot gene therapy that could reduce the amount of virus in your body so much that it effectively cures you. This would be massively beneficial to anybody who has HIV, including in the rich world. The same technology is also being used to treat sickle cell disease, an excruciating and deadly illness.

We’re also making huge progress on tuberculosis, which still kills more people than malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. Last year, a historic phase 3 trial began that could be the first new TB vaccine in over 100 years.

The key to maximizing the impacts of these innovations will be lowering their costs to make them affordable everywhere, and I expect the Gates Foundation will play a big role in making that happen. Health inequities are the reason the Gates Foundation exists. And the true test of our success will be whether we can ensure these life-saving interventions reach the people who need them most—particularly in Africa, South Asia, and across the Global South.  

To reach their full potential, people need access to opportunity. That’s why our foundation focuses on more than just health.  

Education is key. Frustratingly, progress in education is less dramatic than in health—there is no vaccine to improve the school system—but improving education remains our foundation’s top priority in the United States. Our focus is on helping public schools ensure that all students can get ahead—especially those who typically face the greatest barriers, including Black and Latino students, and children from low-income backgrounds. At the K-12 level, that means boosting math instruction and ensuring teachers have the training and support they need—including access to new AI tools that allow them to focus on what matters most in the classroom. Given the importance of a post-secondary degree or credential for success nowadays, we’re funding initiatives to increase graduation rates, too. 

As I mentioned, having access to a high-quality nutrition source is key to keeping kids’ development on track. Smallholder farmers form the backbones of local economies and food supplies, and they play a key role in making that happen. One of the main ways the foundation helps farmers is through the development of new, more resilient seeds that yield more crops even under difficult conditions. This work is even more important in a warming world, since no one suffers more from climate change than farmers who live near the equator. Despite that, I’m hopeful that we can help make smallholder farmers more productive than ever over the next two decades. Some of the crops our partners are developing even contain more nutrients—a win-win for both climate adaptation and preventing malnutrition.

We’ll also continue supporting digital public infrastructure, so more people have access to the financial and social services that foster inclusive economies and open, competitive markets. And we’ll continue supporting new uses of artificial intelligence, which can accelerate the quality and reach of services from health to education to agriculture.

Underpinning all our work—on health, agriculture, education, and beyond—is a focus on gender equality. Half the world’s smallholder farmers are women, and women stand to gain the most when they have access to education, health care, and financial services. Left to their own devices, systems often leave women behind. But done right, they can help women lift up their families and their communities.   

The United States, United Kingdom, France, and other countries around the world are cutting their aid budgets by tens of billions of dollars. And no philanthropic organization—even one the size of the Gates Foundation—can make up the gulf in funding that’s emerging right now. The reality is, we will not eradicate polio without funding from the United States.

While it's been amazing to see African governments step up, it’s still not enough, especially at a moment when many African countries are spending so much money servicing their debts that they cannot invest in the health of their own people—a vicious cycle that makes economic growth impossible.

It's unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people. But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty. There are just too many opportunities to lift people up for us not to take them.

The last chapter of my career

Next week, I will participate in the foundation’s annual employee meeting, which is always one of my favorite days of the year. Although it’s been many years since I left Microsoft, I am still a CEO at heart, and I don’t make any decisions about my money without considering the impact. 

I feel confident putting the remainder of my wealth into the Gates Foundation, because I know how brilliant and dedicated the people responsible for using that money are—and I can’t wait to celebrate them.

I'm inspired by my colleagues at the foundation, many of whom have foregone more lucrative careers in the private sector to use their talents for the greater good. They possess what Andrew Carnegie called “precious generosity,” and the world is better off for it.

I am lucky to have been surrounded by many generous people throughout my life. As I wrote in my memoir Source Code, my parents were my first and biggest influences. My mom introduced me to the idea of giving back. She was a big believer in the idea of “to whom much is given much is expected,” and she taught me that I was just a steward of any wealth I gained.

Dad was a giant in every sense of the word, and he, more than anyone else, shaped the values of the foundation as its first leader. He was collaborative, judicious, and serious about learning—three qualities that shape our approach to everything we do. Every year, the most important internal recognition we hand out is called the Bill Sr. Award, which goes to the staff member who most exemplifies the values that he stood for. Everything we have accomplished—and will accomplish—is a testament to his vision of a better world.

As an adult, one of my biggest influences has been Warren Buffett, who remains the ultimate model of generosity. He was the first one who introduced me to the idea of giving everything away, and he’s been incredibly generous to the foundation over the decades. Chuck Feeney remains a big hero of mine, and his philosophy of “giving while living” has shaped how I think about philanthropy.

I hope other wealthy people consider how much they can accelerate progress for the world’s poorest if they increased the pace and scale of their giving, because it is such a profoundly impactful way to give back to society. I feel fulfilled every day I go to work at the foundation. It forces me to learn new things, and I get to work with incredible people out in the field who really understand how to maximize the impact of new tools.

Today’s announcement almost certainly marks the beginning of the last chapter of my career, and I’m okay with that. I have come a long way since I was just a kid starting a software company with my friend from middle school. As Microsoft turns 50 years old, it feels right that I celebrate the milestone by committing to give away the resources I earned through the company.

A lot can happen over the course of twenty years. I want to make sure the world moves forward during that time. The clock starts now—and I can’t wait to make the most of it.

In a rural health clinic, a baby tries to take her first breath.

But her lungs aren’t ready. Because she was born too early, they haven’t developed the slick, soap-like substance that keeps her air sacs from collapsing. Without that substance—called lung surfactant—breathing becomes a desperate, exhausting act.

She’s suffering from respiratory distress syndrome, or RDS, a life-threatening condition that appears within hours of birth in premature babies. Unless she gets treatment, her oxygen levels will plummet and her organs will begin to shut down. In one study from India, every baby born with RDS outside of a hospital setting died. In Ethiopia and Nigeria, RDS is responsible for almost half of all neonatal deaths.

At hospitals in higher-income countries, there’s a way to save her: a liquid form of organically-derived surfactant delivered directly into the lungs. But the procedure requires a highly-trained specialist to guide a breathing tube down the newborn’s windpipe—avoiding the stomach and placing it just right—at a cost of up to $20,000. In many parts of the world, that kind of care simply doesn’t exist.

But what if any healthcare worker anywhere in the world could simply hold a small nebulizer to the baby's face and deliver surfactant as an easy-to-administer inhalant?

This breakthrough—a synthetic surfactant that’s stable enough to be delivered through a nebulizer—is still in development, drive in part by Gates Foundation-supported research at Virginia Commonwealth University, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and The Lundquist Institute. But its promise is extraordinary: an RDS treatment that costs less to make, doesn’t require a specialist to administer, and eliminates the need for intubation.

In other words, a therapy currently limited to the most advanced hospitals could become accessible in rural clinics and community settings around the world. Even in places with top-tier care, it could make treatment gentler, faster, and easier to deliver. In the United States—where RDS still affects 24,000 newborns a year—it could reduce the risks that come with intubating babies who might weigh only two or three pounds.

It’s the kind of innovation that could help solve one of the most persistent problems in global health: delivering intensive care without an intensive care unit, and helping millions more babies survive their first, most fragile moments.

Since 1990, the mortality rate for children under five has been cut by more than half—an amazing mark of global progress. But another statistic hasn’t fallen as fast: the number of babies who die in their first month of life.

Each year, 2.3 million newborns don’t survive past their first 28 days. And the day a baby is born is the most dangerous day of their life. The single biggest cause of these deaths is prematurity. Nearly 900,000 babies a year die from complications related to being born too soon, including infection, underdeveloped organs, and RDS.

Lower cost, easier-to-deliver surfactant is one way to give newborns a fighting chance, but it’s not the only way. Around the world, simple, affordable interventions already exist to identify at-risk pregnancies earlier, prevent more preterm births, and ensure a healthy birthing experience for mothers. Not only are these tools designed to work in the hardest-to-reach places—many of them start working even before a baby takes that first breath.

One of these innovations is a new type of ultrasound that’s changing who can catch the risks of preterm birth—and where.

Around the world, two thirds of women never get an ultrasound screening during pregnancy. Traditional machines are bulky and expensive, with specialized training required to operate them and interpret their results. In places where medical resources are already stretched thin, these types of ultrasounds are rarely an option.

But now, we have ultrasound devices about the size of a phone that can be operated by a nurse or midwife—no on-site specialist required. They weigh less than a pound. They process scans instantly. Their AI interface automatically detects high-risk conditions, like a shortened cervix or signs of early labor, so patients are referred for further care. And they have built-in telehealth functions to share images with remote specialists when needed.

By finding and flagging risks early, these AI-enabled ultrasounds are giving healthcare workers more time to act. In some cases, that means transferring the mother to a higher-level facility. In others, it means providing her with antenatal steroids—an inexpensive, underused treatment that speeds up fetal lung development—and, when needed, medications that delay labor just long enough for those steroids to take effect.

Early warning is essential, but we can save even more lives by going further upstream, starting with the health of pregnant women themselves.

In many low-income countries, undernutrition isn’t an exception. It’s the norm. And the intense demands of pregnancy make nutritional deficiencies even worse—putting mothers at increased risk of complications or death in childbirth, and raising the odds of early labor, low birth weight, and developmental delays for their babies.

But there’s a surprisingly simple fix: a daily supplement called MMS, or multiple-micronutrient supplementation, developed by the United Nations. It contains 15 essential vitamins and minerals for pregnancy—like zinc to reduce the risk of early labor, folic acid to help prevent birth defects, iron and vitamin D for healthy birth weight, and iodine for brain development. For an entire pregnancy, it costs just $2.60.

If MMS became the standard prenatal supplement in every low- and middle-income country, it could save nearly half a million newborn lives each year—and prevent serious complications in 25 million births by 2040.

The innovations above focus on treating, detecting, and preventing premature birth, a huge threat to newborn survival. But one of the most powerful ways to protect babies, preterm or full-term, is by ensuring their mothers stay healthy through pregnancy and childbirth.

When a woman dies during delivery, her baby is 46 times more likely to die in that first month of life. That’s why any serious effort to tackle infant mortality must also address postpartum hemorrhage—which tragically kills 70,000 women a year and is the leading cause of maternal mortality. Fortunately, two innovations are already helping healthcare workers catch and treat it before it becomes fatal.

The first is a calibrated drape—a simple plastic sheet placed under a woman during delivery that collects blood and shows, through printed measurement lines, exactly how much she’s losing. It gives healthcare workers a fast, accurate way to spot dangerous bleeding before it becomes life-threatening. The second is a one-time, 15-minute iron infusion during pregnancy that treats severe anemia—so if a woman does hemorrhage during childbirth, she’s less likely to experience catastrophic blood loss and more likely to survive.

Neither of these tools is complicated or expensive. But in combination, they can make a life-or-death difference for mothers and the babies who depend on them.

Taken together, these innovations form a chain of survival. They help mothers stay healthy through pregnancy. They detect problems before they become emergencies. They give fragile newborns a fighting chance. And they make it possible for families to celebrate a baby’s birth rather than mourning a loss.

Some of these tools are already saving lives. Others are on the verge of doing so. But their impact will be limited unless we prioritize and fund their delivery, not just their development. The world needs to make sure these innovations don’t get stuck in labs or warehouses—so they can reach the mothers and babies who need them most.

We started the Gates Foundation 25 years ago to save and improve children’s lives. But no one can solve a problem they don’t fully understand. And back in 2000, the world’s understanding of childhood mortality was occasionally inaccurate, often imprecise, and almost always incomplete.

That’s why I believe the breakthrough that transformed our foundation in the two-and-a-half decades since wasn’t a single vaccine or treatment—it was a revolution in the world’s understanding of childhood mortality. Through advances in how researchers collect and analyze global health data, we now know much more about what kills children, where these deaths occur, and why some kids are more vulnerable than others. By putting those insights to work, we’ve been able to save lives.

The first challenge was knowing exactly what was killing children.

Reading the 1993 World Development Report opened my eyes to the scale of the problem: Around 12 million children under the age of five were dying every year, with a staggering disparity between rich and poor countries. But the available data was fragmented and inconsistent. That made it difficult to understand trends or allocate resources effectively.

So the foundation helped create the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, to give a permanent home to the Global Burden of Disease study—originally developed in the 1990s by researchers at Harvard University and the World Health Organization. We wanted to expand it from a static snapshot of the problem into a regularly updated tool that tracked how diseases impact people around the world. That gave us something the world never had before: a comprehensive—and current—picture of child mortality across every country.

Measuring symptom-based causes of children’s deaths was an important step. But broad disease categories like “diarrhea” or “respiratory infection” didn’t give us enough information to act on. We needed to know which specific pathogens were responsible for the most common and fatal cases. So the Gates Foundation funded two landmark studies to find out.

In 2013, the Global Enteric Multicenter Study, or GEMS, found that rotavirus was causing 20 percent of lethal diarrhea cases in kids. At the time, diarrhea was the second-leading infectious killer of children. While oral rehydration therapy had already helped bring down deaths over previous decades, GEMS helped fast-track the rollout of a more targeted tool—a new rotavirus vaccine—in the hardest-hit countries, in close partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

A year later, the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health study, or PERCH, revealed that respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, was a much more common cause of severe pneumonia—the leading infectious killer of kids around the world—than previously understood. (And not just in low- and middle-income countries, where 97 percent of RSV deaths occur, but in higher-income ones too, where the virus still fills pediatric hospital wards each winter.) That prompted us to expand our investments in RSV prevention, which led to the approval of the first maternal vaccines for RSV in 2023.

But understanding what causes childhood mortality wasn’t enough on its own, because deaths aren’t distributed evenly across countries—or even within them. That’s why our second challenge was to figure out where exactly children were dying.

At the time, most health data was collected at national or regional levels. That masked major differences in disease burden from one community to the next—and made it harder to target interventions effectively.

To solve this second challenge, the foundation invested in new approaches to health mapping that combined satellite imagery, GIS technology, GPS data, and local health surveys. These maps gave Ministries of Health and implementing partners unprecedented, anonymized detail about disease patterns and population distribution, down to individual neighborhoods, that transformed how and where public health resources are deployed—while still preserving the privacy of the individual children and families in these places.

In Pakistan—one of just two countries where wild polio remains endemic—advanced mapping tools have helped vaccination teams reach and protect kids in settlements that weren’t on any official maps. Across sub-Saharan Africa, better geographic data has transformed the fight against malaria by revealing that transmission often clusters in small, hyper-local pockets. Through the Malaria Atlas Project, countries like Nigeria can now track those patterns more precisely—and then get bed nets, testing, and treatment where they’ll have the greatest impact.

With better knowledge of what was killing children, and where, one more fundamental question remained: Why might one child die from a disease while another—who lives in the same place, faces the same risks, and gets the same treatment—survives? This was our third big challenge.

In theory, traditional autopsies would provide the answer. But in the places where most childhood deaths still occur, these invasive procedures are often impossible to perform—too costly, and sometimes opposed for religious, cultural, or personal reasons.

So in 2015, the foundation launched the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance network, or CHAMPS, which now operates in nine countries across Africa and South Asia. Working with in-country partners, CHAMPS pioneered a new autopsy alternative—using minimally invasive tissue sampling—that can determine causes of death quickly and accurately while respecting local customs and beliefs.

Through CHAMPS, we discovered that childhood deaths rarely have a single cause. Instead, kids often have multiple conditions at the same time, with malnutrition frequently leaving them much more vulnerable to a whole host of infections. (While it rarely shows up on death certificates, it’s an underlying cause of death in nearly half of all child mortality cases.) That finding helped solidify nutrition as a core focus of the foundation’s global health work—and the research, innovation, and product development we invest in. On the ground, we’re supporting partners as they integrate nutrition screening into routine care and train healthcare workers to manage multiple risks at once.

CHAMPS also demonstrated that inadequate prenatal care is responsible for a majority of stillbirths, newborn deaths, and maternal deaths, prompting us to further expand access to maternal health services—like prenatal vitamins and AI-enabled ultrasounds—in the communities where we work.

But the biggest takeaway from CHAMPS is also the most hopeful—and a reminder of why we started the Gates Foundation in the first place: So many childhood deaths could be prevented with existing interventions. We just need to ensure they reach the right children at the right time.

Twenty-five years in, our work on child mortality is far from complete. Still, the impact of what we have learned has been enormous

The Global Burden of Disease, GEMS, and PERCH studies helped shift global priorities by showing the world what was really killing kids—and where new vaccines and treatments could make the biggest difference. Better geospatial tools have empowered countries to pinpoint disease hotspots, find previously unmapped settlements, and distribute life-saving resources where they’re needed most. And CHAMPS is giving governments better data on why children are dying—data that’s now shaping policies, improving reporting, and guiding more effective care.

Most importantly, even as the number of children born every year has gone up, the number of overall childhood deaths has fallen by more than half—from 11.3 million in 1990 to 4.5 million in 2022. Playing a part in making that happen is the best job I’ve ever had, and the most meaningful work I’ve ever done.

At the Gates Foundation, we used to say we could cut child mortality in half again by 2040. The truth, though, is that goal feels further out of reach now—not because the science has stalled, but because support for global health has. The progress we’ve been part of was only possible because governments around the world, including here in the U.S., made long-term commitments to saving lives and followed through. That kind of leadership gave millions of children who would have died a chance at life—and made life better for millions more. 

The last 25 years have shown us what’s possible. The next 25 will depend on whether the world keeps showing up for the children who need it most.

I’ve been working in global health for two and a half decades now, and the transformation in how we fight HIV/AIDS is one of the most remarkable achievements I’ve witnessed. (It’s second only to how vaccines have saved millions of children's lives.)  

At the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, an HIV diagnosis was often a death sentence. But in the years since, so much has changed. Today, not only do we have anti-retroviral medications that allow people with HIV to live full, healthy lives with undetectable viral loads—meaning they can’t transmit the virus to others. We also have powerful preventative medications known as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, that can reduce a person’s risk of contracting the virus by up to 99 percent when taken as prescribed. It’s an incredible feat of science: a pill that virtually prevents HIV contraction.

In theory, if we could get these tools to everyone who needs them and make sure they’re used correctly, we could stop HIV in its tracks. Because when people with the virus receive proper treatment, they can’t transmit it to others. And when people at risk take PrEP, they can’t contract it. In practice, however, getting these tools to people—and making sure they’re used correctly—is the hard part. Especially for PrEP.  

That’s because current preventatives require people to take medication every single day. Miss a dose, and protection drops. It’s like trying to remember to lock your front door 365 times a year—if you mess up once, you’re vulnerable. For many people, the barriers stack up quickly. Some have to walk hours to reach a clinic. Others struggle to store medication safely or discreetly at home. And many face judgment and stigma for taking PrEP, especially young women in conservative communities. The very act of protecting yourself can lead to being shamed or ostracized. 

That’s why I’m so excited about a new wave of innovations in HIV prevention. Scientists are in the process of developing several longer-lasting PrEP breakthroughs, each with distinct advantages that could help more people protect themselves on their own terms. 

Lenacapavir, which requires only two doses per year through injection, could open HIV prevention up to people who can’t make frequent clinic visits. Cabotegravir, another injectable option that works for two months at a time, offers a more flexible dosing schedule than daily PrEP pills, too. Meanwhile, a monthly oral medication called MK-8572, still in the trial stage, could provide an alternative for people who prefer pills to injections. The Gates Foundation is even exploring ways to maintain a person’s protection for six months or longer. And researchers are working on promising PrEP options that include contraception, which would be particularly valuable for women who need both types of protection. 

To understand how these options work in real life, and not just in labs, our foundation has supported implementation studies in South Africa, Malawi, and elsewhere. Unlike traditional clinical trials that test safety and efficacy in highly controlled settings, these studies examine how medications fit into people’s lives and work in everyday circumstances—looking at ease of use, cultural acceptance, and other practical challenges. This real-world understanding is crucial for successful adoption.  

Some people ask me if these new preventative tools mean the Gates Foundation has given up on finding an HIV vaccine. Not at all. In fact, these advances push us to aim even higher in our research for a vaccine that could prevent HIV for a lifetime—and not just a few months at a time. Our goal is to create multiple layers of protection, much like modern cars have seatbelts, airbags, and even collision-warning sensors. Different tools work better for different people in different ways, and we need every tool we can get. 

But even the most brilliant innovations make no difference unless they reach the people who need them most. This is where partnerships become crucial. Through grants to research institutions around the world, the foundation is working to lower manufacturing costs for HIV drugs so they’re accessible to everyone, everywhere. Then there are organizations like the Global Fund and PEPFAR, which have been instrumental in turning scientific advances into real-world impact.  

The Global Fund—which needs to raise significant new resources next year to continue its work—currently helps more than 24 million people access HIV prevention and treatment. And PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives since its inception in 2003—a powerful example of how American leadership can build tremendous goodwill while transforming the world. Motivated by the belief that no person should die of HIV/AIDS when lifesaving medications are available, President George W. Bush created PEPFAR with strong bipartisan backing and it continues to serve as a lifeline to millions of people.  

We're at a pivotal moment in this fight. Twenty years ago, many believed it would be impossible to deliver HIV treatment at scale in Africa’s poorest regions. Since then, we’ve made fantastic progress. Science has shown us promising paths forward—for better prevention options, easier treatment regimens, and, maybe one day, an effective vaccine. Our task now? Ensuring the life-saving innovations we already have reach the people whose lives they can save. 

Almost thirty years ago, I wrote a book called The Road Ahead, about the transformative potential of the internet and other new digital technologies. Back then, I envisioned a world where online payments and e-government would change how we interact with money, services, and each other. Today, much of that has become a reality, in part due to the development of digital public infrastructure. In my recent travels around the world, I’ve seen up close how DPI is revolutionizing the way entire nations serve their people, respond to crises, and grow their economies. And at the Gates Foundation, we see it as an important part of our efforts to help save lives and fight poverty in poor countries.  

There are a few core components that constitute DPI: digital ID systems that securely prove who you are, payment systems that move money instantly and cheaply, and data exchange platforms that allow different services to work together seamlessly. These systems and platforms are to the digital world what roads, bridges, and power lines are to the physical one—an underlying structure that connects people, data, and money online. Strong DPI can propel a country forward by making it easier for people to access essential services, participate in the formal economy, and improve their lives. On the flip side, DPI that is poorly implemented (or simply non-existent) can slow a country’s development and perpetuate inefficiencies and inequities.  

In the 21^st century, digital public infrastructure is proving to be as important for progress as its brick-and-mortar predecessors—and the effects have been impressive around the world, wherever it’s been embraced.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to the World’s Fair in Seattle. It was amazing to see all these fantastic technologies that felt like something out of a science fiction novel. I asked them to take me back multiple times during the six months it was open here, and I remember walking away from the fairgrounds each time feeling that I had just caught a glimpse of the future.

That feeling came back to me recently as I walked out of a classroom in Newark, New Jersey.

In May, I had the chance to visit the First Avenue Elementary School, where they’re pioneering the use of AI education in the classroom. The Newark School District is piloting Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor and teacher support tool, and I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.

I’ve written a lot about Khanmigo on this blog. It was developed by Khan Academy, a terrific partner of the Gates Foundation. And I think Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, is a visionary when it comes to harnessing the power of technology to help kids learn. (You can read my review of his new book, Brave New Words, here.)

We’re still in the early days of using AI in classrooms, but what I saw in Newark showed me the incredible potential of the technology.

I was blown away by how creatively the teachers were using the tools. Leticia Colon, an eighth-grade algebra teacher, explained how she used AI to create problem sets about hometown heroes the students might be interested in. In February, Khanmigo helped her develop equations that incorporated Newark boxer Shakur Stevenson’s workout routines, so her students could practice math skills while learning about a real-world role model.

Cheryl Drakeford, a third-grade math and science teacher, talked about how she uses Khanmigo to help create rubrics and lesson hooks for assignments. The technology gives her a first draft, which she then tailors for her students. For example, the AI once gave her a hook that used a generic story about a fruit stand, and she edited it to be about Pokémon cards and Roblox—two topics her students are passionate about. “Khanmigo gives me the blueprint, but I have to give the delivery,” she said.

Several of the teachers I met with showed me how they can access each student’s dashboard and get a summary of how they’re doing in a particular subject. They loved being able to easily and quickly track a student’s progress, because it’s saving them a lot of time. They were also excited about how their students are using Khanmigo as a personalized tutor.

This technology is far from perfect at this point. Although the students I met loved using Khanmigo overall, they also mentioned that it struggled to pronounce Hispanic names and complained that its only voice option is male—which makes it clear how much thought must still be put into making the technology inclusive and engaging for all students. In an ideal world, the AI would know what the students in Ms. Drakeford’s class are into, so she wouldn’t have to do any editing. And Ms. Colon told me it took her several tries to get Khanmigo to give her what she wanted.

In other words, my visit to Newark showed me where we are starting from with AI in the classroom, not where the technology will end up eventually. It reinforced my belief that AI will be a total game-changer for both teachers and students once the technology matures. Even today, when the teachers at First Avenue delegate routine tasks to AI assistants, they reclaim time for what matters most: connecting with students, sparking curiosity, and making sure every child feels seen and supported—especially those who need a little extra help.

Khanmigo is just one of many AI-powered education tools in the pipeline, and the Gates Foundation is focused on ensuring these tools reach and support all students, not just a few. Our goal is that they help level the playing field, not widen existing gaps. We’re currently working with educators across the country to get feedback and make the technology more responsive to their needs. Visits like the one I took to Newark are part of that process. It was fantastic to learn what teachers were enthused about and see how different students are engaging with AI.

The educators I met in Newark are true pioneers. Some were on the cutting edge, constantly looking for new ways to use AI in their classroom. Others were using it in a more limited fashion. I was impressed by how the school was able to support each teacher’s comfort level with the technology. They’re putting a lot of thought into change management and making sure that no educator is forced to try things that won’t work in their classroom.  

That’s because, at the end of the day, teachers know best. If you hand them the right tools, they will always find a way to support their students. My visit to Newark left me more optimistic than ever that AI will help teachers do what they do best and free them up to focus on what matters most.

When I was in high school, one of my favorite classes was drama. A teacher pushed me to sign up, and I was fully prepared to hate it—but I fell in love with acting. Drama pushed me to broaden myself, try something new, and see if I could succeed. I even gained enough confidence to audition for—and get—the lead in “Black Comedy,” the school play my senior year.

Blaire Penry, the 2024 Washington State Teacher of the Year, understands how transformative a class like drama can be, because she’s seen it happen with her own students. And I was blown away by how she uses technology to reimagine how students engage in the classroom.

Blaire teaches career and technical education, or CTE, and fine arts in the Auburn School District, which is located about 30 miles south of Seattle. Over the years, she has taught a wide range of electives—including marketing, worksite learning, career choices, and psychology, in addition to drama—to both middle and high school students.

What really sets Blaire apart, though, is her approach to online education. When schools switched to remote instruction in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Blaire quickly realized that the existing curriculum didn’t work. It just wasn’t engaging enough without the face-to-face interaction. At the time, her school district was doing fully synchronous instruction. Teachers did live instruction, students could ask questions, and classes operated on the same schedule as before. Still, her students struggled to connect with the material from their homes.

So, she helped develop a new curriculum that worked in an online setting and innovated new techniques to keep her students engaged.

Blaire created new materials and lesson plans that resonated more with Auburn students, 76 percent of whom are people of color—including a new social justice curriculum aimed at helping her kids become more active and informed citizens. Homeroom became a structured social period where students could get to know their teacher and each other, since the normal opportunities to connect—over lunch, or in the hallway between classes—aren’t available in online instruction. The chat function was used constantly throughout her classes, with Blaire checking in to make sure students were engaged and the kids asking (and answering!) questions about the material.

“It gave me this moment to dismantle my curriculum and build it back up with my community in mind, which is such a gift,” Blaire told me. “I found that creative challenge incredibly fulfilling, and it gave me a chance to, I think, become a better teacher.”

The work that Blaire and her colleagues did was eventually spun off into Auburn Online School. Although schools reopened in Washington in 2021 and many students returned in-person, a lot of students in her district continued to opt for remote instruction. Many of them lived in intergenerational households, with older family members who were at risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19. Auburn Online gave them a safe, high-quality option for continuing their education.

The Gates Foundation supported a lot of schools that offered this kind of support during the pandemic, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that some students continued to learn remotely to keep their loved ones safe. But what stunned me was how many kids wanted to stick with online instruction for reasons that had nothing to do with the pandemic.

Although many students struggled with the transition to online learning and lack of face-to-face interaction with their teachers and peers, Blaire found that a number of her kids not only adapted but thrived. Some needed extra flexibility so they could work a job or keep up with other responsibilities. Others benefited from having greater control of their learning environments. For example, they could focus much better in the comparative quiet of their own homes, or they had less anxiety when they could answer a question in a chat rather than by raising their hands in front of the whole class.

It blew my mind to learn that fully remote instruction works better for some students. Like many people, I’ve always thought of it as a necessary obstacle to overcome in times of necessity. But Blaire sees it as a tremendous opportunity for some families—and as a powerful tool for driving equity.

I was especially fascinated to hear how she teaches drama. I didn’t think it was a class that would lend itself well to online instruction, but Blaire convinced me otherwise.

“One of the things that is really fun about teaching drama online is that it gives students the space to explore and try things out in ways they might not with all eyes on them in a classroom,” she told me. For example, Blaire sets her students up in breakout rooms, where they can practice in small groups or with her. When it comes time to perform a monologue, they record it—and if they don’t like their performance, they just try it again until they have a version they’re comfortable with other people seeing.

“Some of my students might not have taken a drama class,” she says. “But when you release some of that immediate pressure of performing, you give them permission to be creative in ways they haven’t explored before.”

Blaire is clear that online education isn’t the right fit for everyone. But she’s a firm believer that families deserve it as an option.

Because she is such a big thinker about how technology can help students, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask her what she thinks about AI. Blaire is excited about how AI tools will help her better track her students’ progress and provide them with personalized tutors—two use cases I recently saw firsthand in Newark, NJ.

She hopes that teachers are given adequate training on using AI, especially given the biases it can reinforce. Blaire told me about a technology showcase she recently attended. The facilitator was showing off how AI can help teachers save time and asked it to put together a top ten list of recommended reading material for middle schoolers. Every author on the list was white, and almost all of them were men.

This is a solvable problem. AI can be programmed to be more representative and thoughtful in its answers—but it’s going to require input from brilliant teachers like Blaire, who understand the potential and limits of technology in the classroom.

“Online learning creates an opportunity for teachers to be a little bit fearless,” Blaire says. “It’s an opportunity to examine your students, examine your community, and then put it in the forefront of how you’re going to move forward. It’s exciting to try something new, be innovative, and disrupt the norm.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Open the newspaper, turn on the TV, or go online, and you’ll find alarming headlines about raging wildfires, devastating storms, and severe droughts. Climate change is staring us in the face, and the evidence is everywhere. What's harder to see, unless you know where to look, is growing evidence that we're making real progress in the fight against it. That's why I'm so excited to be in London this week for the Breakthrough Energy Summit. Here, this progress is on full display, and we’re bringing together global leaders, industry executives, innovators, and investors to accelerate it.

When we launched Breakthrough Energy back in 2015, the Paris Agreement had just been adopted. Nearly every country on earth committed to ambitious emissions cuts in the fight against climate change. But it was clear that meeting these goals would require unprecedented investment from the private sector to drive innovation. It would also require extraordinary collaboration across all sectors to get clean energy ideas out of the lab and into the market affordably and at scale. This work has been Breakthrough Energy's mission from day one.

At the first BE Summit in 2022, I shared updates on the cutting-edge concepts and companies we’re supporting that address the five grand challenges—manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, transportation, and buildings—behind most of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. This year, in London, we have much more to share: a portfolio of climate technologies that aren't just theoretical or promising anymore, but proven and ready for the market today.

That's what makes this summit so momentous. In less than a decade, investment has helped turn pipe dreams into a pipeline of transformative solutions. Now, it’s time to invest so those solutions can scale up, deploy, and slash emissions in every sector of the economy.

Manufacturing – 29% of global emissions

Manufacturing—how we make almost everything—is one of the hardest sources of emissions to cut. While the challenges here are complex, the pace of progress has been incredible, and faster than what I hoped when I started Breakthrough, especially in cement and steel, which each contribute around 10 percent of all global emissions. CarbonCure has pioneered a way to inject waste carbon into fresh concrete, the end product cement is used for—making the second-most consumed material on earth much greener. Their retrofits of existing facilities, deployed at over 800 locations worldwide, have prevented nearly half a million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ecocem’s ACT technology for low-carbon cement was recently approved for full commercial use across Europe—while another of its low-carbon concrete solutions was used in construction for the Athletes’ Village at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris. And Boston Metal has nailed the production of “green” steel without coal at scale, and now has a facility up and running in Brazil.

Electricity – 29% of global emissions

Most experts agree that the world’s electricity needs will triple by 2050. And when it comes to climate change, electrification is a key part of the solution. But only if the electricity is green; otherwise, we’re just swapping one source of emissions for another. Until recently, we haven’t had good options for storing electricity at scale, which made it hard to get the most out of intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Now, Form Energy’s affordable batteries can store this energy for multiple days and make it more reliable. Their West Virginia factory, which is nearing completion, is bringing over 750 jobs to a town whose tin mill recently closed. And TS Conductor’s advanced power lines, already commercially deployed, can double the amount of transmittable power and help maximize our current grid’s efficiency.

Agriculture – 20% of global emissions

What we grow and eat has a huge impact on the climate. But Pivot Bio is lessening that impact with microbial products that allow crops to draw nitrogen from the air, giving farmers something they’ve wanted for a long time: a more reliable and efficient form of fertilizer. Their solutions—which produce less than one percent of the emissions of synthetic fertilizers and need 1,000 times less water—are already being used across five million acres of land to help farmers improve productivity while eliminating emissions. And Rumin8, whose feed supplements have successfully reduced livestock methane emissions by over 90 percent while boosting productivity, demonstrates that we can enjoy beef and dairy without the high environmental costs they're typically associated with. They recently opened a demonstration plant in Australia to showcase the commercial viability of their products.

Transportation – 15% of global emissions

Electric vehicles are the future, but their batteries are made of resources that are both limited and difficult to source responsibly. One solution is recycling—and Redwood Materials has figured out a better way to do it. At their facility in Nevada, the metals found in recycled batteries are refined and then reused in new batteries, all while emitting 40 to 70 percent less than other recycling processes. But recycling alone won’t be enough to meet the growing demand for EVs and electrification more broadly. New supplies will be needed—something KoBold Metals has cracked the code on. They’re using AI to more reliably find minerals and metals that will undergird the energy transition, most recently copper in Zambia.

Long-distance and heavy-duty transportation still have significant technical hurdles to overcome, but there’s impressive progress being made, particularly in aviation and shipping. ZeroAvia, for instance, is developing hydrogen-electric aircraft engines with operations in the U.K. and U.S., and their prototype engines are successfully flying aircraft in early trials.

Buildings – 7% of global emissions

Ensuring that buildings are warm in the winter and cool in the summer takes a lot of energy—and much of it gets wasted by single-pane windows and leaky ducts that let heat and AC slip out. But there are new options to help fix these issues. LuxWall has created ultra-insulating window glass that is so efficient, it performs like a wall you can see through. After years of R&D, their windows are rolling off the production line at their first commercial factory in Michigan; once installed, the windows will cut both costs and emissions. Then there’s Aeroseal, whose innovative polymer technology finds and plugs air leaks in a building’s envelope and ducts and is already commercially deployed.

Carbon Management

To limit global warming, though, it’s not enough to stop emitting greenhouse gases going forward. We also need to manage what’s already been emitted. In Arkansas, Graphyte is turning plant waste into carbon-trapping bricks and burying them underground; if they sequester 50,000 tons of carbon by 2025 as planned, it will be the largest carbon removal project in the world. In California, Heirloom Carbon’s first-in-the-nation commercial Direct Air Capture facility uses limestone forty feet high to absorb carbon from the air like a sponge. The pilot facility is removing 1,000 tons a year already, and they have plans to scale rapidly.

These are just a few of the more than 100 BE-backed companies that are gathered in London this week to showcase their solutions—all addressing the grand challenges, all ready to work, and all proof that the Clean Industrial Revolution is here. (For more on the progress we’ve made and what’s still left to do, see BE’s latest State of the Transition report.)

Now we need to supercharge our support and ramp up our investments. With commitments and capital from governments and industry leaders, we can deploy these solutions and get them to scale. We can drive down the stubborn green premiums that make a lot of clean technologies more expensive than their dirty counterparts (and too expensive for widespread adoption). We can keep the innovation pipeline flowing. We can get much closer to an abundant, affordable, clean energy future.

Thanks to brilliant minds, big ideas, and bold investments, transformative climate tech has arrived. It's here in London. The Breakthrough Energy Summit is where the momentum that’s been building since 2015 meets the marketplace. I can’t wait to talk to everyone here about where we go next. And I’m eager to see how the connections, partnerships, and investments forged over the next few days help this climate tech reach everyone—and help us reach net zero.

Hello from Kemmerer, Wyoming! It’s been just over a year since my last visit, and I’m blown away by how much has changed.

One of the oldest buildings in downtown Kemmerer—once an opera house—has been restored and is now home to a mercantile and a bakery. Just down the street, the owners of the local coffee shop have purchased an 100-year-old building to expand their operation. A law office has opened, and city officials tell me that plans are moving forward for new multi- and single-family housing developments.

I’m thrilled to see so much economic growth happening, because Kemmerer will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world. I just left the groundbreaking ceremony for the first-ever Natrium plant, which will bring safe, next-generation nuclear technology to life right here in Wyoming. It’s a huge milestone for the local economy, America’s energy independence, and the fight against climate change.

Today is a big one for Kemmerer—for the coal plant workers who will be able to see their future job site being constructed across the highway, for the local construction workers who will be part of a 1,600-person skilled labor force building the plant, and for the local businesses that will take care of the new workforce. 

The plant was designed by TerraPower, a company I started in 2008. But my nuclear journey started several years earlier, when I first read a scientific paper for a new type of nuclear power plant.

The design was far safer than any existing plant, with the temperatures held under control by the laws of physics instead of human operators who can make mistakes. It would have a shorter construction timeline and be cheaper to operate. And it would be reliable, providing dependable power throughout the day and night. As I looked at the plans for this new reactor, I saw how rethinking nuclear power could overcome the barriers that had hindered it—and revolutionize how we generate power in the U.S. and around the world.

So, we started TerraPower, where nuclear scientists could take the concept and transform it into a reality. Since then, the amazing team at TerraPower has proven we can do nuclear better. They are leading the country—and the world—in developing safe, next-generation nuclear technology.

But that technology was just an idea in a lab and on a computer screen until today.

You can read more about the super cool science behind the Natrium plant here. Now that we’ve broken ground, the first order of business is to build the sodium test facility, which will test components and transfer the liquid sodium that will be used to cool the nuclear reactor. Construction will continue over the years ahead before the plant hopefully comes online in 2030.

For a project this big and this important to work, it takes private companies partnering with public leaders and governments. I can’t say enough good things about Mayor Bill Thek, Mayor Mark Langley, and the remarkable communities here in Kemmerer and Diamondville, who have embraced this project.

Today couldn’t have happened without the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is supporting the project with the largest single contribution the federal government has ever committed to a private project. If we’re going to solve climate change, it’s going to take courage, commitment, and partnership between the federal government and private industry, a point that Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has made repeatedly. Gov. Mark Gordon and Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis have been true champions, and we’re grateful for the support from TerraPower’s investors and development partners, including Bechtel, GE Hitachi, PacifiCorp, and Berkshire Hathaway.

What’s next? The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted TerraPower’s construction permit application for review last month. It’s a step that sounds bureaucratic but is, in fact, a huge deal and the first time something like this has happened with a commercial non-light water reactor in more than 40 years. This step starts the review process at the NRC for the permit application—once it is approved, construction can begin on the actual nuclear reactor.

The review process will take a couple of years, so in the meantime, TerraPower will continue to build the non-nuclear parts of the facility. Construction will begin next year on the so-called “energy island,” which is where the steam turbines and other machinery that actually generate power will sit. (The reactor will eventually be part of a “nuclear island,” and the team hopes to start building that in 2026.)

While these first-of-a-kind projects can be big and risky, they are too important for our future to fail to act. I’m proud of all those who have helped ensure the most advanced nuclear project in the world gets built right here in the United States.

I believe that the next-generation nuclear power plant that TerraPower is building here will power the future of our nation—and the world. Everything we do runs on electricity: buildings, technology, and increasingly transportation. To meet our economic and climate goals, we need more abundant clean energy, not less. The ground we broke in Kemmerer will soon be the bedrock of America’s energy future. Today, we took the biggest step yet toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy.

I was excited to get a drone for my birthday last year. I couldn’t wait to get it into the air and see what my backyard looked like from the sky. But, as anyone who has used one can tell you, I quickly learned a harsh truth: Flying a drone isn’t easy. It takes a lot of practice and skill.

Maybe it’s time to pull the drone back out, because I was lucky to get a lesson from the experts last month in India. During my visit to Delhi, I met with Sangita Devi, Sumintra Devi, and Kajol Kumari—three Drone Didis from Bihar who are taking India’s agricultural productivity to new heights.

The women I met are part of the Indian government’s Namo Drone Didi program. (Didi is the Hindi word for “sister.”) It was launched in 2023 to help rural women boost their income and boost India’s agricultural productivity—and although the program is still in its early days, I’m already impressed by its results.

Right now, the Drone Didis primarily use their flying skills to fertilize crops. Applying fertilizer via drone has a lot of benefits over doing it by hand. Since you can spray farther away from the plant, the liquid fertilizer becomes more atomized—which means that it turns into finer droplets that cover more area. This benefits both farmers and the environment, because you need significantly less fertilizer and less water to help distribute it. Plus, it’s faster. One Drone Didi can cover as much as five acres in the same time it would take five people to cover half an acre.

I cannot wait to see how the program expands in the years ahead. The Indian government has plans to equip the drones with advanced sensors and imaging technology. This will allow Drone Didis to use real-time data to deliver targeted interventions to improve the quality and quantity of farmers’ crops. They will be able to detect diseases and pests, assess soil moisture levels, monitor crop growth, and more.

I’m equally excited to track how the Drone Didi program continues to empower women across India. Every Didi is affiliated with a self-help group, or SHG. The plan is to provide nearly 15,000 drones to SHGs across India by the end of next year.

In the United States, where I live, self-help groups are usually associated with mental health. In India, they’re a form of mutual aid. Each SHG is small—most are around 12 people, although some are as big as 25—and brings together women to support each other socially and financially. They pool their savings, access microloans at lower interest rates, and solve problems in areas like health and education.

The Didis I met with were longtime members of SHGs organized by JEEViKA, an organization in Bihar that works to lift people from rural areas out of poverty. During our time together in Delhi, Kajol told me about how JEEViKA helped her open her own shop three years ago, where she sells seeds and fertilizers. She loves being an entrepreneur, and when she was approached about becoming a Drone Didi, she knew it would do wonders for her business.

Each Didi attends a training program in Hyderabad or Noida, where they are taught how to pilot the drone and apply fertilizer effectively. (I was surprised to hear that learning to fly is apparently easier and takes less time than learning to fertilize!) Other women in their SHGs are trained as drone technicians, ready to repair the machines if any problems arise.

In the less than two years, the Drone Didi program is already transforming the lives of its pilots. Kajol is using the extra income she’s earned to expand her shop offerings and build a warehouse to store her stock. She also plans to send her children to a better school. Sangita’s family couldn’t afford a bicycle before she became a Drone Didi—today, she is the proud owner of an auto rickshaw.

Sumintra hopes that, when people see someone like her flying a huge drone, it changes their perception of what women are capable of. Like many women in her area, she married very young and was expected to stay home with her children. Today, her kids call her “Pilot Mummy” and dream about her flying airplanes one day.

I hope you think of the Didis the next time you hear the buzz of a drone above you at a wedding or a park. It’s remarkable how one piece of technology can reshape what is possible in a community. Kajol told me that people sometimes look at her and say, “She’s flying too high! What will she do next?”

Her response? “This is just the beginning. Wait and see what’s coming.”

I’m an optimist by nature, but sometimes my optimism gets challenged. It’s not always easy to believe that the future is bright. Over the years, though, I’ve developed a trick that always helps cheer me up: I look to the unsung heroes who are doing amazing work around the world to improve people’s lives.  

I’ve written about many of them in my Heroes in the Field series, and today I want to introduce you to another one. Her name is Dora Shimbwambwa, and she’s a plant researcher in Zambia who’s using her expertise to help farmers thrive in a warming climate.

Dora works as a research officer at the Zambian office of the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, where she focuses on developing new ways to combat crop pests and diseases. Her research aims to help smallholder farmers improve their yields and incomes while promoting sustainable farming practices. As she explained, "My work involves creating awareness about crop pests and then researching different technologies that will help control the pest." 

Dora seems to have been born to do this work, though it took her a while to realize it. She grew up at the Cotton Development Trust, an agricultural research station in southern Zambia where her father worked. Surrounded by plant scientists, she was exposed to agricultural science from an early age, but like a lot of kids, she didn’t pay much attention to her dad’s work.  

When it was time to pick a career, she opted to follow in his footsteps, but mainly because she knew it would lead to a good job. Then, as she got into the work, she started to see the impact she could have for her community—“and from that time,” she says, “I haven’t looked back.” 

Dora is especially focused on an invasive pest called fall armyworm, which has devastated maize crops across Africa in recent years. Unfortunately, climate change is making crops even more vulnerable—fall armyworm thrives in a hot, dry environment, and Zambia is in the midst of its worst drought in 40 years. 

Synthetic pesticides are part of the solution, but they can be expensive, and they can kill other insects that are beneficial to the crops. So Dora is working on alternative methods, such as using biopesticides that target the fall armyworm specifically and don’t leave toxic residues. 

Beyond her scientific expertise, what impresses me about Dora is her commitment to working directly with farmers and agricultural extension officers. She regularly travels to rural communities to conduct trainings and field trials, ensuring that her research translates into real-world impact. She keeps farmers’ hours—usually getting out of bed around 3 a.m., a habit she has had since she was a young girl.  

Of course, none of this important work happens in isolation. Dora is quick to emphasize the collaborative nature of her research and acknowledge the people who have mentored her along the way. She's part of a growing network of African women in agricultural research, supported by organizations like African Women in Agricultural Research and Development. "Agriculture is mainly dominated by men,” Dora says. “So sometimes you just need a voice to guide you and give you confidence." 

Thanks in large part to young scientists like Dora, I’m quite bullish about the future of African agriculture. By developing effective and practical ways to help farmers grow more food and earn more money, they are helping to build a brighter future for Africa. And that should give all of us reason to be optimistic. 

As a middle school student in India, Sudha Varghese was paging through a magazine when she saw a photo that changed her life. It was a picture of a ramshackle hut on a roadside in Bihar State. This was where some of India’s poorest families live, a caption explained.

The image stuck with her. Raised in a prosperous family in Kerala, India, Sudha couldn’t imagine living in such conditions. Something, she thought, needed to be done to help the poor. And she decided she would be the one to do it.

“I decided all my efforts, all my resources, all my time, all my love, whatever I have, all that will go for the poor people who are needy,” she said.

Sudha’s family didn’t support her plans. But she didn’t give up. She joined a religious order, became a Catholic nun, and started doing charitable work. A few years later, disappointed that she wasn’t doing enough to help the poorest, Sudha struck out on her own. She moved to Bihar to live in a community like the one she saw in that photograph.

The people who lived there, she learned, were the Musahar. Musahar literally means “rat eaters.” In India’s earlier caste system, they were viewed as the “untouchables.” They could not own land and worked as poorly paid farm laborers. Most never had the opportunity to go to school. (You can read more about my visit in 2010 to a Musahar village in India here.)

Sudha asked some Musahar villagers for a place to stay. They offered her a grain shed. And so began a lifetime of work to improve their lives.

Sudha focused her efforts on the Musahar women and girls. They suffered from discrimination, and often violence. Sudha worked with them so that they could stand up for their rights. She helped them get funding for hand pumps so they could have access to clean water. She also encouraged them to ask for higher wages.

But the biggest challenge Musahar women faced, Sudha says, was how they had come to see themselves. Entering a room, they would look at the ground and always take a back seat. They thought they were not worthy of respect, she said.

Changing mindsets is never easy. And while she could work with the adult women, it was even more important to work with girls, she decided. They needed an education in a school that would help them redefine their self-image by believing in themselves and their potential for greatness.

No school like that existed, so Sudha decided to open one herself. She named it Prerna, which means “inspiration” in Hindi.

Prerna school offers reading, writing, math, history, and science. But Sudha wanted her students to learn how to stand up for themselves and be confident. So, she also added karate to the curriculum. The girls proved to be talented martial artists. Some have even competed in the world karate championships in Japan.

Sudha also teaches them yoga, drawing, painting, and singing. Her goal is to create well-rounded young women ready to pursue their dreams. More than 5,000 girls have graduated from her program.

During COVID-19, her school, like all schools in India, was forced to close for many months. Sudha and the other teacher tried to stay in touch as best they could through online classes, although many girls didn’t have access to mobile phones. They are in the process of restarting in-person learning this year.

Sudha also runs Nari Gunjan (“woman’s voice”), a nonprofit organization that provides education, literacy, vocational training, healthcare, and life skills for these women and girls in Bihar.

There is still much more work to be done to improve the lives of this community. Many families still live in poverty and are marginalized. But thanks to Sudha’s school and many efforts being made by the Bihar Government, Musahar girls are now pursuing their dreams of studying to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and leaders in their community.

If a photographer came to Bihar today, a photo of a hut by the side of the road, like the one Sudha saw in a magazine decades ago, wouldn’t capture the story of the Musahar. What would, is a portrait of the young graduates of Sudha’s school. It would show them holding their heads high, looking straight into the camera’s lens, and inviting anyone who ever doubted themselves to believe in their own potential.

When you see someone suffering from a terrible disease, it’s hard not to imagine a world where no one has to feel this way ever again. But the problem with eradication is that it’s really, really hard. The fewer cases remain, the more difficult it is to find them. That’s why, in all of human history, we’ve only eradicated two diseases: smallpox and the cattle disease rinderpest.

That might change soon.

The world is close to eradicating Guinea worm disease, a debilitating and painful condition that once devastated an estimated 3.5 million people in Africa and South Asia every year. Thanks to heroes like Makoy Samuel Yibi, that number dropped to 13 people in 2023.

As the national director of the South Sudan Ministry of Health’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program, Makoy helped reduce the number of cases in his country last year to just two. That’s a remarkable accomplishment by any standard, but it’s truly impressive when you consider the circumstances he and his team have faced: civil wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, the political changes brought by South Sudan’s decision to become an independent country in 2011, and the fact that the nation was once home to 90 percent of the world’s Guinea worm cases.

I recently caught up with Makoy at the COP climate conference in Dubai, where we both participated in an event focused on ending neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs, like Guinea worm. When you meet him in person, it’s hard to imagine a better person for the job. Makoy is passionate, brilliant, and laser-focused on making life better for the people of South Sudan. So I was surprised to learn that, as a young man, he never imagined a career in health.

Makoy was born in Terekeka County, a rural area located on the shores of the West Nile in southern Sudan. When he was a young man, Makoy had one primary focus: avoiding military service, which could be extremely dangerous. A chance meeting with a general from Terekeka resulted in a position with the national health department. A measles outbreak was ravaging parts of Sudan at the time, and Makoy’s first assignment was to travel from village to village providing care.

“What struck me,” he recalls, “was that, in every household we went to, we found at least half of the household was down with Guinea worm.”

The Guinea worm is a particularly nasty parasite. It’s unlikely to kill you, but the disease it causes—which is also called dracunculiasis, or “afflicted with little dragons”—can incapacitate you for months at a time and leave you permanently disabled. That can have devastating consequences if your family counts on you to grow the food you eat and sell it to make a living, as many people in South Sudan do.

The way the disease works is horrifying. If a person drinks water contaminated with Guinea worm larvae, the larvae enter the digestive system and mate. The impregnated female worm grows, undetected by the body’s immune system. Around a year later, the infected person will start to feel an itch somewhere on their body (usually the lower leg or foot). After a couple days, a painful blister appears and eventually bursts. The worm—which is now about one meter long—slowly starts to emerge from the wound.

This can take weeks or even months, and the pain it causes is excruciating. The wound can get infected, which could result in permanent disfigurement or even require amputation. And people often endure multiple worms emerging at the same time. Makoy has seen patients with as many as 40 worms.

And here’s the most insidious part: One of the few ways to relieve the pain of the blister is by soaking it in cold water, like a pond or a puddle. But that’s exactly what the worm wants. As soon as it touches water, it releases its larvae, starting the cycle anew. The Guinea worm is scarier and more efficient than any monster in a horror movie.

Makoy has seen countless times how devastating Guinea worm can be. “This is a situation where you see serious disruption of the livelihood of the community,” he says. “You see people going through a cycle of hunger because they don’t have enough. They have lost the window of cultivation. They’re not able to tend to their cattle, and there’s nothing they can do.”

There is no cure or treatment for Guinea worm, and yet, the world is on the doorstep of eradicating it. How? Through a series of highly effective interventions and a network of incredibly dedicated health workers.

Makoy’s team has built a network of volunteers in virtually every village in the country, who report rumors of Guinea worm cases. They spend every day searching for cases, getting the word out, and building trust in a country where more than 60 languages are spoken.

Makoy and his colleagues investigate every single rumor, no matter how remote. During the rainy season when the majority of cases happen, he often spends days hiking through the Sudd or up a mountain with all of his supplies on his back just to reach his destination. Last year, in a country the size of France with less than 100 miles of paved road, the team responded to nearly all of the 50,000 rumors they received within 24 hours.

Once the team finds a confirmed case, they make the patient as comfortable as possible and do what is called “controlled immersion.” This means soaking the affected area in a bucket of water and encouraging the worm to come out.

Makoy also spends a lot of time preventing people from getting Guinea worm in the first place. His team distributes free water filters and educates communities about safe water practices. The system they’ve built to support this work has strengthened health systems across the country, providing a platform for delivering other health services like childhood vaccination.

Makoy’s team has had a tremendous partner in all of this work: former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center. In 1995, when Makoy was first starting his public health journey, President Carter negotiated what remains the longest humanitarian ceasefire in history when he helped convince both sides of the Second Sudanese Civil War to lay down their arms and allow health workers access to treat Guinea worm and other diseases, like polio and river blindness. Today, the Carter Center continues to lead the global eradication campaign’s march to zero. The Gates Foundation is proud to support the Carter Center as part of our overall efforts to tackle NTDs. (You can learn more about Makoy’s partnership with the Carter Center in a new film called The President and the Dragon that is coming out later this year.)

Eradication is now within sight, although it won’t be easy to eliminate the last few cases. South Sudan previously reported no Guinea worm in 2018, but cases were subsequently discovered after a peace agreement was reached in the South Sudanese Civil War. And Guinea worm has recently been detected in dogs and other animals, mainly in Chad. Eradication will require stopping all transmission, both human and animal.

But Makoy Samuel Yibi is optimistic we can get there—and so am I. His determination to root out every last case makes me hopeful that we will someday soon celebrate the end of Guinea worm disease.

“In the places where Guinea worm has been eliminated,” he says, “you can actually see how communities have been energized. They are more active, and they are productive. The communities are now empowered to be more self-sufficient, because they don’t have to worry about Guinea worm.”

Officially, Uganda’s maternal mortality rate is double the global average. But because that number doesn’t count those who give birth at home—in a country where poverty, distance, stigma, and distrust are all barriers to medical care—Eva Nangalo believes the real one may be much higher.

That’s why, as a midwife determined to eliminate these deaths altogether, she’s spent the past 23 years working to make hospital deliveries both more safe and more common.

For Nangalo, this is more than a job. It’s her life’s work, and something she’s felt called to do for as long as she can remember. “I was created to be a midwife, born to be a midwife, trained to be a midwife,” she said. “It’s what is in my DNA. That’s what I am.”

Working the night shift at Nakaseke General Hospital in rural central Uganda and tending to her family’s farm while off the clock, Nangalo is known for sleeping maybe one or two hours, if that, a day. When the power goes out in the middle of a delivery—which happens often—she uses the flashlight on her cellphone to get the job done. She even keeps her hair short rather than style it the way she’d prefer.

In her own words: “I’ve wanted my hair to be like other women. But then I think of the one dollar saving a mother’s life.”

That isn’t theoretical. Nangalo regularly reaches into her own pockets to ensure that expecting mothers have the transportation they need to get to the hospital in the first place—and the food, milk, and medicine they and their babies need to survive not only childbirth but also what comes next. She once tore a piece of her own bedsheet to give to a mother who didn’t have one at home.

It’s no wonder she’s made a name for herself—literally—among the women she’s served, with many choosing to name their daughters after her.

Her advocacy efforts—and their effects—are broad and far-reaching. Understanding the fears and misconceptions that exist in Uganda around healthcare facilities, she uses the radio to reach skeptics and explain the merits of hospital deliveries and the higher risks of fatal infection and bleeding inherent to home births. She helped establish a newborn clinic in Nakaseke, improving the safety of childbirth at the hospital and increasing the number of families served. She even pushed the government to make good on its own policies and open a health facility in every sub-county.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Eva Nangalo is making childbirth in Uganda safer for everyone involved.

“The future looks bright,” one colleague said, “if we have more and more people like Eva.” Fortunately, she’s working to ensure that’s exactly what happens.

My dad passed away peacefully at home yesterday, surrounded by his family.

We will miss him more than we can express right now. We are feeling grief but also gratitude. My dad’s passing was not unexpected—he was 94 years old and his health had been declining—so we have all had a long time to reflect on just how lucky we are to have had this amazing man in our lives for so many years. And we are not alone in these feelings. My dad’s wisdom, generosity, empathy, and humility had a huge influence on people around the world.

My sisters, Kristi and Libby, and I are very lucky to have been raised by our mom and dad. They gave us constant encouragement and were always patient with us. I knew their love and support were unconditional, even when we clashed in my teenage years. I am sure that’s one of the reasons why I felt comfortable taking some big risks when I was young, like leaving college to start Microsoft with Paul Allen. I knew they would be in my corner even if I failed.

As I got older, I came to appreciate my dad’s quiet influence on almost everything I have done in life. In Microsoft’s early years, I turned to him at key moments to seek his legal counsel. (Incidentally, my dad played a similar role for Howard Schultz of Starbucks, helping him out at a key juncture in his business life. I suspect there are many others who have similar stories.)

My dad also had a profound influence on my drive. When I was a kid, he wasn’t prescriptive or domineering, and yet he never let me coast along at things I was good at, and he always pushed me to try things I hated or didn’t think I could do (swimming and soccer, for example). And he modeled an amazing work ethic. He was one of the hardest-working and most respected lawyers in Seattle, as well as a major civic leader in our region.

My dad’s influence on our philanthropy was just as big. Throughout my childhood, he and my mom taught me by example what generosity looked like in how they used their time and resources. One night in the 1990s, before we started our foundation, Melinda, Dad, and I were standing in line at the movies. Melinda and I were talking about how we had been getting more requests for donations in the mail. Dad simply said, “Maybe I can help.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would not be what it is today without my dad. More than anyone else, he shaped the values of the foundation. He was collaborative, judicious, and serious about learning. He was dignified but hated anything that seemed pretentious. (Dad’s given name was William H. Gates II, but he never used the “II”—he thought it sounded stuffy.) He was great at stepping back and seeing the big picture. He was quick to tear up when he saw people suffering in the world. And he would not let any of us forget the people behind the strategies we were discussing.

People who came through the doors of the Gates Foundation felt honored to work with my dad. He saw the best in everyone and made everyone feel special.

We worked together at the foundation not so much as father and son but as friends and colleagues. He and I had always wanted to do something concrete together. When we started doing so in a big way at the foundation, we had no idea how much fun we would have. We only grew closer during more than two decades of working together.

Finally, my dad had a profoundly positive influence on my most important roles—husband and father. When I am at my best, I know it is because of what I learned from my dad about respecting women, honoring individuality, and guiding children’s choices with love and respect.

Dad wrote me a letter on my 50^th birthday. It is one of my most prized possessions. In it, he encouraged me to stay curious. He said some very touching things about how much he loved being a father to my sisters and me. “Over time,” he wrote, “I have cautioned you and others about the overuse of the adjective ‘incredible’ to apply to facts that were short of meeting its high standard. This is a word with huge meaning to be used only in extraordinary settings. What I want to say, here, is simply that the experience of being your father has been… incredible.”

I know he would not want me to overuse the word, but there is no danger of doing that now. The experience of being the son of Bill Gates was incredible. People used to ask my dad if he was the real Bill Gates. The truth is, he was everything I try to be. I will miss him every day.

My family worked together on a wonderful obituary for my dad, which you can read here.

I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of former president Jimmy Carter, and my heart is heavy for the whole Carter family. For more than two decades, I’ve had a chance to work with Jimmy, Rosalynn, and the Carter Center on several global health efforts, including our mutual work to eliminate deadly and debilitating diseases.

The Carters were among my first and most inspiring role models in global health. Over time, we became good friends. They played a pretty profound role in the early days of the Gates Foundation. I’m especially grateful that they introduced us to Dr. Bill Foege, who once helped eradicate smallpox and was a key advisor for our global health work.

Jimmy and Rosalynn were also good friends to my dad. One of my favorite photographs of all time shows Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my dad in South Africa holding babies at a medical clinic. I remember my dad coming back from that trip with a whole new appreciation for Jimmy’s passion for helping people with HIV. At the time, then-President Thabo Mbeki was refusing to let people with HIV get treatment, and my dad watched Jimmy almost get into a fist fight with Mbeki over the issue. As Jimmy said in a 2012 conversation at the Gates Foundation hosted by my dad, “He was claiming there was no relationship between HIV and AIDS and that the medicines that we were sending in, the antiretroviral medicines, were a white person’s plot to help kill black babies.” At a time when a quarter of all people in South Africa were HIV positive, Jimmy just couldn’t accept Mbeki’s obstructionism.

As with HIV, Jimmy was on the right side of history on many issues. During his childhood in rural Georgia, racial hatred was rampant, but he developed a lifelong commitment to equality and fairness. Whenever I spent time with him, I saw that commitment in action. He had a remarkable internal compass that steered him to pursue justice and equality here in America and around the world.

After Jimmy “involuntarily retired” (his term) from the White House, he reset the bar for how Presidents could use their time and influence after leaving office. When he started the Carter Center, he gave a huge shot in the arm to efforts to treat and cure diseases that rich governments were ignoring, like river blindness and Guinea worm. The latter once devastated an estimated 3.5 million people in Africa and South Asia every year. That total dropped to just 14 cases in 2023, thanks to the incredible efforts of the Carter Center.

When the world eradicates Guinea worm, it will be a testament to Jimmy’s dedication—and yet another remarkable achievement to add to his list of accomplishments. He won the United Nations Human Rights Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote 30 books. He helped monitor more than 100 elections in countries with fragile democracies—and did not pull and punches about the ways America’s own democracy was being undermined from within.

He worked to erase the stigma of mental illness and improved access to care for millions of Americans. He taught at Emory University. He built hundreds of homes with Habitat for Humanity. And, as I saw when I visited with Jimmy and Rosalynn in Plains a few years ago, he also painted, built wooden furniture, and took the time to offer his intellect and wisdom to people from all walks of life. As he once told my dad, tongue in cheek, “I have Secret Service protection, so I can pretty well do what I want to!”

Whenever I have struggled with a global health challenge, I knew I could call him and ask for his candid advice. It’s just starting to sink in that I can no longer do that.

But President Carter’s example of moral leadership will inspire me for as long as I’m able to pursue philanthropy—just as it will the hundreds of millions of people whose lives he touched through peacemaking, preaching, teaching, science, and medicine. James Earl Carter Jr. was an incredible statesman and human being. I will miss him dearly.

Part 1 of the Netflix documentary series Inside Bill’s Brain tells the story of the Gates Foundation’s quest to rethink sanitation for the world’s poorest. First step: reinvent the toilet! This belief in the power of innovation has been a constant in my life, starting from the time I fell in love with software in high school to my work today at our foundation. What follows is the story of a moment of clarity for me on that path and the influence of someone who’s been a critical guide along the way.

If you’d have asked me in my twenties if I’d ever retire early from Microsoft, I’d have told you that you were crazy. I loved the magic of software, and the ever-rising learning curve that Microsoft provided. It was hard for me to imagine anything else I’d rather do.

By my mid-forties my perspective was changing. The U.S. government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft had drained me, sucking some of the joy out of my work. Stepping down as CEO in early 2000, I hoped to focus more on building software products, always the best part of my job.

Also, my world view was broadening. Both Melinda and I were feeling a strengthening pull toward our young foundation and its work in U.S. education and the development of drugs and vaccines for diseases in poor countries. For the first time in my adult life I allowed myself space for non-Microsoft reading, soaking up books on the immune system, malaria and the history of plagues just as I had once scoured The Art of Computer Programming.

With our commitment to philanthropy growing, Melinda and I transferred $20 billion of Microsoft stock to our foundation, making it the largest of its kind in the world. Within a year I’d taken my first overseas trip for the foundation, to India, where I squeezed drops of polio vaccine into babies’ mouths. Melinda traveled to Thailand and India to study how those countries were handling AIDS.

Our good friend Warren Buffett was curious about this new journey we were on. So in the fall of 2001, he invited me to a resort in West Virginia and asked me to speak to a group of business leaders about what Melinda and I were learning.

I’m not a natural public speaker. But at Microsoft, speech after speech, year after year, I learned to step out on a stage and paint a vision of technology for our customers, partners and the media. It helped that people wanted to hear about the white-hot software industry. I grew to enjoy it.

I felt like I was starting over with our foundation. At big global meetings, like the World Economic Forum, people flocked to hear me detail some cool piece of software, but the crowd and the energy would be gone when later that day I’d announce an innovative plan to get vaccines to millions of children.

At the time, many people I met thought health problems in low-income countries were so big and intractable that no amount of money could make any significant difference. I could see why. It was easy to ignore death and disease happening so far away. And so much of what we read in the news about global health focused on doom and gloom. This frustrated me. The problems were real enough, but so is the power of human ingenuity to find solutions. Melinda and I felt a strong sense of optimism, but we didn’t see that reflected in these stories.

Right around the time Warren asked me to give the talk, Melinda and I were trying to figure out how we might use our voices to raise the visibility of global health. Would anyone listen?

My speech to Warren’s friends was a chance to practice. If I could stir them, it would be a step towards persuading the people with the power to make the biggest difference: the legislators and heads of countries who decide how much money flows into foreign aid and global health.

I was a little nervous heading to the conference room where Warren’s group was gathered—but more than that, I was exhausted. We were in the midst of negotiations over the antitrust case, and I’d been on the phone with lawyers deep into the night. I hadn’t had time to write a full speech. I’d just jotted notes between calls, trying to simplify all we had learned into the clearest possible story.

I started talking, haltingly at first. Our big revelation, I explained, had come in the mid-1990s when Melinda and I realized how much misery in poor countries is caused by health problems that the rich world had stopped trying to solve because we’re no longer affected by them. That incensed us. The cost of that inequity at the time was three million children dying ever year, I said.

Those deaths, we realized, weren’t caused by a bunch of runaway diseases, but by a handful of illnesses that are largely treatable. Diarrhea and pneumonia alone were responsible for half of the deaths among children. Many of those children could be saved with medicines and vaccines that already existed. All that was lacking were incentives and systems to get those life-saving technologies to the people and places where they were needed—and some new inventions to speed the change.

Our philanthropy, I explained, followed the same philosophy that guided Microsoft: relentless innovation. The right vaccine can wipe a deadly virus off the planet. A better toilet can help stop diarrheal disease. Investments in science and technology can help millions to survive their childhood and lead healthy productive lives—potentially the greatest return in R&D spending ever.

As I spoke, the legal tangles that had consumed me the night before vanished. I was energized. When ideas excite me, I rock, I sway, I pace—my body turns into a metronome for my brain. For the first time, all the facts and figures, anecdotes and analyses cohered into a story that was uplifting—even for me. I was able to make clear the logic of our giving and why I was so optimistic that a combination of money, technology, scientific breakthroughs, and political will could make a more equitable world faster than a lot of people thought.

I could tell from the nods and laughs and caliber of questions that the group got it. Afterward, Warren came over with a big smile. “That was amazing, Bill,” he said. “What you said was amazing, and your energy around this work is amazing.” I grinned back at him. Three ‘amazings’—a first.

The confidence I found that day encouraged me to take a more public role on global health issues. Over the next year, I refined my message at events and in interviews. I spent more time talking about health with government leaders. (That’s now a big part of my job.)

But something else had happened, too. The speech helped me see more clearly a life for myself after Microsoft, centered on the work that Melinda and I had started. Software would remain my focus for years and I will always consider it the thing that most shaped who I am. But I felt energized to get further along this new path we were traveling, to learn more and to apply myself to the obstacles in the way of more people living better lives. Eventually, I would retire from Microsoft almost a decade earlier that I had planned. The 2001 speech was a step, a private moment, on the way to that decision.

Now I get to focus every day on trying to deliver the vision I outlined in that conference room almost two decades ago. The world is more equitable now than it was then. But we’ve still got a long way to go. By letting Netflix’s cameras in, I hope you can see the joy I get from my work and why I am so optimistic that with ingenuity, imagination, and determination, we can make even more progress towards that goal.

In the introduction to his latest book, How to Feed the World, Vaclav Smil writes that “numbers are the antidote to wishful thinking.” That one line captures why I’ve been such a devoted reader of this curmudgeonly Canada-based Czech academic for so many years. Across his decades of research and writing, Vaclav has tackled some of the biggest questions in energy, agriculture, and public health—not by making grand predictions, but by breaking down complex problems into measurable data.

Now, in How to Feed the World, Vaclav applies that same approach to one of the most pressing issues of our time: ensuring that everyone has enough nutritious food to eat. Many discussions about feeding the world focus on increasing agricultural productivity through improved seeds, healthier soils, better farming practices, and more productive livestock (all priorities for the Gates Foundation). Vaclav, however, insists we already produce more than enough food to feed the world. The real challenge, he says, is what happens after the food is grown.

This kind of argument is classic Vaclav—questioning assumptions, forcing us to rethink the way we frame problems, and turning conventional wisdom on its head. His analysis is never about the best- or worst-case scenarios; it’s about what the numbers actually tell us.

And the numbers tell a striking story: Some of the world’s biggest food producers have the highest rates of undernourishment. Globally, we produce around 3,000 calories per person per day—more than enough to feed everyone—but a staggering one-third of all food is wasted. (In some rich countries, that figure climbs to 45 percent.) Distribution systems fail, economic policies backfire, and food doesn’t always go where it’s needed.

I’ve seen this firsthand through the Gates Foundation’s work in sub-Saharan Africa, where food insecurity is driven by low agricultural productivity and weak infrastructure. Yields in the region remain far lower than in Asia or Latin America, in part because farmers rely on rain-fed agriculture rather than irrigation and have limited access to fertilizers, quality seeds, and digital farming tools. But even when food is grown, getting it to market is another challenge. Poor roads drive up transport costs, inadequate storage leads to food going bad, and weak trade networks make nutritious food unaffordable for many families.

And access is only part of the problem. Even when people get enough calories, they’re often missing the right nutrients. Malnutrition remains one of the most critical challenges the foundation works on—and it’s more complex than eating enough food. While severe hunger has declined globally, micronutrient deficiencies remain stubbornly common, even in wealthy countries. One of the most effective solutions has been around for nearly a century: food fortification. In the U.S., flour has been fortified with iron and vitamin B since the 1940s. This simple step has helped prevent conditions like anemia and neural tube defects and improve public health at scale—close to vaccines in terms of lives improved per dollar spent.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is Vaclav’s exploration of how human diets evolved. Across civilizations, people independently discovered that pairing grains with legumes created complete protein profiles—whether it was rice and soybeans in Asia, wheat and lentils in India, or corn and beans in the Americas. These solutions emerged from practical experience long before modern science could explain why they worked so well.

But just as past generations adapted their diets to available resources, we’re now facing new challenges that require us to adapt in different ways. Technology and innovation can help. They’ve already transformed the way we produce food, and they’ll continue to play a role. Take aquaculture: Once a tiny industry, it’s grown over the past 40 years to supply more seafood for the world than traditional fishing—a scalable way to meet global protein demands. The Green Revolution is another example. Beginning in the 1960s, innovations in higher-yielding crops, more effective fertilizers, and modern irrigation prevented widespread famine in India and Mexico. These changes were once seen as unlikely, too.

New breakthroughs could drive even more progress. CRISPR gene editing, for instance, could help develop crops that are more resilient to drought, disease, and pests—critical for farmers facing the pressures of climate change. Vaclav warns that we can’t count on technological miracles alone, and I agree. But I also believe that breakthroughs like CRISPR could be game-changing, just as the Green Revolution once was. The key is balancing long-term innovation with practical solutions we can implement immediately.

And some of these solutions aren’t about producing more food at all—they’re about wasting less of what we already have. Better storage and packaging, smarter supply chains, and flexible pricing models could significantly reduce spoilage and excess inventory. In a conversation we had about the book, Vaclav pointed out that Costco (which might seem like the pinnacle of U.S. consumption) stocks fewer than 4,000 items, compared to 40,000-plus in a typical North American supermarket.

That kind of efficiency—focusing on fewer, high-turnover products—reduces waste, lowers costs, and ultimately eases pressure on global food supply, helping make food more affordable where it is needed most.

How to Feed the World had a lot to teach me—and I’m sure it will teach you a lot, too. Like all of Vaclav’s best books, it challenges readers to think differently about a problem we thought we understood. Growing more and better food remains crucial—especially in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where there simply isn’t enough. But as the world’s population approaches 10 billion, increasing agricultural productivity alone won’t solve hunger and malnutrition. We also need to ensure that food is more accessible and affordable, less wasted, and just as nutritious as it is abundant.

After all, the goal isn’t to make more food for its own sake—it’s to feed more people.