Melinda French Gates Says Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Other Billionaires Are Not Philanthropists

Melinda French Gates says there is a new generation of billionaire activists who aren’t really philanthropists.

Speaking to The New York Times, the ex-wife of Bill Gates — who recently rocked the philanthropic world when she announced she was leaving the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given away nearly $80 billion since it was founded in 2000 by the former spouses — was asked her opinion on a new generation of billionaires that includes Tesla Motors CEO and X Corp. owner Elon Musk, Twitter founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, American hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

“[T]he people you just named have not been very philanthropic yet,” she responded during the interview, which was published online Sunday. “They use their voice and they use their megaphones, but I would not call those men philanthropists.”

The NYT interviewer put French Gates and her ex-husband, Bill, into the same group of billionaire activists as Warren Buffet, noting they all have a more “traditional approach to philanthropy.” She was asked if she put Musk, Dorsey, Ackman and Thiel in a different group because “they haven’t signed the Giving Pledge,” which describes itself as “a promise by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.”

“Some have” signed the pledge, she countered, “and I’m not saying that’s the way they have to do it. But go look at their record of actually giving money to society. It’s not big,” she added with a laugh. “So you put Bill and me and Warren in a class of philanthropists doing things in a certain way, but I don’t think you can then say, ‘OK, well, let’s compare to this group over here who are nonphilanthropists.’ Those are nonphilanthropists, in my opinion.”

French Gates also was asked about her recent decision to become more political in a public way. In June, she endorsed President Joe Biden — a first for her — and then after he dropped out of the presidential race, she publicly backed Vice President Kamala Harris. She said she decided she needed to speak out after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which stated that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, which as a result gave the power to regulate abortion to elected officials.

“After the Dobbs decision, I knew I had to speak out in favor of women’s rights, and if there was a candidate who is against women’s rights and says terrible things about women, there is no way I could vote for that person,” French Gates explained. “And I felt that that decision, because of all the downstream repercussions it has for maternal health, for Black women, for deserts where women can’t even go now to get good maternal care in the United States — all the downstream effects that are coming and will continue to come from that decision are so severe, I thought, you know, if I really believe in women in our country and women’s rights, I need to speak up. Because women are the ones that are going to make or break this election. And women in battleground states speaking up for what they want, for their rights and for our democracy. That’s why I felt it was so important. But yes, it was not a decision I came to easily.”

After she publicly endorsed Biden, Musk posted on X that her endorsement “[m]ight be the downfall of western civilization.” For her part, French Gates said she thought his reaction was “silly.”

Updated 5:28 p.m. July 28: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to French Gates as Gates’ widow instead of his ex-wife.