As the federal government has continued to slash funding for scientific research, clean energy, social services, public safety, and education, billionaire philanthropists have stepped in to fill the void. Take MacKenzie Scott, for example, who has used her $26 billion philanthropy to rescue organizations like The Trevor Project, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, and HBCUs in danger after the Trump administration’s funding cuts.
Now, the Gates Foundation is stepping in to help fund scientific research through an historic $540 million gift to The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent research organization at the University of Washington. The 10-year grant will go toward improving access to freely available scientific health evidence used by governments, researchers, and leaders to improve health nationally and globally. The grant will allow IHME to expand its Global Burden of Disease study to improve health data for thousands of new areas. It will expand from roughly 925 locations today to nearly 5,000.
“Reliable and independent evidence can mean the difference between reacting to a health crisis after it has taken hold and acting early enough to change its course,” Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, IHME director and professor of health metrics sciences, said in a statement. “This investment will allow us to provide high-quality evidence at a much more local level and help leaders understand not only where health is improving or worsening, but which decisions can make the greatest difference for people.”
This is the continuation of a longstanding relationship between the Gates Foundation and IHME since the $89 billion philanthropic organization provided the founding investment to establish the organization at UW in 2007.
The gift comes on the heels of some scrutiny about the philanthropic organization’s alleged connections to deceased, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that, in part, severed ties between the Gates Foundation and its most supportive donor, Warren Buffett. To be sure, a recently released external review commissioned by the Gates Foundation found Bill Gates and his staff of the charitable organization had met with Epstein more than two dozen times, but the conversations appeared to focus only on a public health fund that never came to be, as well as a grant to the International Peace Institute, which was run by an Epstein associate.
“Earlier this year, the foundation acknowledged that it regretted having any employees interact with Epstein in any way,” according to a Gates Foundation statement. The review found no evidence the foundation paid Epstein. “It also found no evidence of participation in, or knowledge of, Epstein’s ongoing sex trafficking operations or criminal activities,” the statement continued.
Gates Foundation’s dedication to global health
Last summer before any connections between Gates or the Gates Foundation and Epstein came to light, Fortune was the first to report the charitable organization would wind down in 2045.
That announcement marked an aggressive acceleration of the foundation’s giving, with the organization announcing in early 2026 it would give away $9 billion this year to prepare for its closure while slashing hundreds of jobs.
Gates has said he would give away virtually his entire fortune and spend more than $200 billion through 2045, doubling the roughly $100 billion the foundation had already spent in its first 25 years. Gates told Fortune the compressed timeline was the point: “By spending the money sooner than later, it allows us to be very ambitious,” he told Fortune’s former senior reporter Alexa Mikhail in 2025.
Global health has been the foundation’s defining focus since Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates launched it 25 years ago. The organization helped establish two of the field’s most consequential institutions, including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Gates Foundation credits those efforts with helping save 82 million lives since 2000.
Over its final two decades, the foundation has said it will concentrate on ending preventable maternal and child deaths, eradicating deadly infectious diseases, and lifting people out of poverty.
So, the new IHME gift fits squarely within that mission, and, increasingly, within a landscape where billionaire philanthropy is backfilling the retreat of federal funding.
