Gates Foundation Commits $1 Billion for Equitable AI

Seattle | September 15, 2026: The Gates Foundation has announced plans to spend at least US$1 billion over the next two years to expand access to artificial intelligence and AI-enabled solutions, knowledge and opportunities, with a focus on health, education and livelihoods.

The announcement coincides with the launch of the foundation’s 10th annual Goalkeepers Report, titled Make This Matter: AI, Equity, and the Choice We Can’t Delay. The report examines how AI could help reduce gaps between higher- and lower-income communities if its development and deployment are designed with equity in mind.

“The Gates Foundation was created in part to address a basic market failure: the people with the greatest needs often have the least power to shape where innovation and investment go,” writes Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, in the report. “Much of our work has been about closing that gap. AI presents the same challenge, only at much greater speed. Left to the market alone, the most capable tools will be built first for the people and institutions most able to pay for them—not necessarily for those who could benefit most.”

The report identifies three areas for action: developing AI tools that work across the languages people speak, building systems suited to the contexts where they will be used, and investing in people and affordable access so communities can evaluate and adapt AI technologies.

The foundation’s US$1 billion commitment will be distributed across four priority areas. Education and health care will each receive about 40%, supporting applications such as AI tutoring, classroom teaching tools, diagnostics, clinical decision-making, maternal and newborn care, and drug and vaccine discovery.

Another 10% will support agriculture, including AI-generated advice for smallholder farmers based on soil, weather and crop conditions. The remaining 10% will go towards digital infrastructure, including datasets in languages that current AI systems do not adequately understand.

The foundation said the funding will support partners working to improve access to AI and ensure that tools reflect the knowledge and priorities of the communities they are intended to serve.

“We can harness AI for good. But it won’t happen by accident,” writes Gates. “[I]t requires a deliberate, specific commitment from government leaders and the companies developing the technology: to measure success not only by what AI can do for the most profitable users but by what it can do for the people who stand the most to gain.”

The foundation is also calling on governments, technology companies and other organisations to contribute resources and expertise towards making AI more useful, accessible and affordable.