Transcript
0:00 Mark Zuckerberg's fortune just passed $200 billion. And according to a promise he and his wife Priscilla Chan made in 2015, 99% of their meta shares are supposed to be given away. Their three daughters will not inherit most of it. So where is all that money going? The answer is one of the boldest bets in the history of philanthropy. The couple says they are going all in on AI powered biology. Their goal in their own words is to help cure or prevent all disease.
0:37 Not one disease, all of them. But here is why this matters far beyond one family. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Alman, and Bill Gates have all made their own promises about giving away their fortunes. and Daario Amurai and Demi Hassabis believe AI could compress decades of medical progress into a few years. The richest people on earth are betting the AI can do what doctors could not. So let us go through the promise.
1:11 How much has really been given? The shift to AI biology. What the other tech billionaires have pledged? The criticism and what it could mean for your health. Every source is in the description. And this is not a small side story. Americans have been searching for Zuckerberg's pledge all weekend. People want to know a simple thing. When the richest people in the world say they will give their money away, do they really mean it? First, where did this promise come from? In December 2015, after the birth of their first daughter, Max Zuckerberg and Chan published an open letter to her on Facebook. In it, they pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares during their lifetimes.
2:03 To understand the letter, you need to know who wrote it. Zuckerberg started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Priscilla Chan, whom he met at Harvard, became a pediatrician working with children and families in San Francisco. That medical background is a big part of why health became the center of their giving. He wrote, "Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today." And near the end, Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children.
2:44 The letter set out two big goals for the money, advancing human potential, and promoting equality. It talked about personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities. At the time, some readers called it inspiring. Others called it a very public way to manage a fortune. At the time, those shares were worth about $45 billion. Today, Fortune reports that Zuckerberg's fortune tops 200 billion.
3:18 So, the promise has more than quadrupled in size simply because Meta's stock has soared on the AI boom. And it was not a straight line. In 2022, when Zuckerberg bet heavily on a metaverse and advertising slowed, Meta's stock fell below $100 a share and his fortune shrank dramatically. Then came job cuts. The year of efficiency and the AI boom, and the stock recovered many times over.
3:51 The size of the pledge rode that roller coaster with it. Zuckerberg still owns roughly 13% of Meta and that stake through special voting shares gives him majority control of the company so he can give away money over time while still deciding the future of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta's AI. The couple now has three daughters and according to fortune they are not slated to inherit most of the fortune in a world where most great fortunes pass from generation to generation. That is a remarkable choice if it is fully carried out. Of course, even 1% of $200 billion is still around $2 billion.
4:41 So no one should worry about the girl's future. There is a detail critics noticed from the very start. The money does not go into a traditional charity. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative known as CZI is a limited liability company, not a conventional private foundation. Why does that matter? According to Fortune, the structure gives the couple flexibility over timing and causes and lets them invest in for-profit companies and fund policy advocacy. A traditional foundation has stricter rules on what it can do and how much it must give each year. Supporters say this lets CZI move faster and back the best ideas wherever they are, including startups. Critics say it gives a billionaire more control and less transparency and that the word philanthropy should mean money that leaves your hands for good. It is also important to separate the two. The pledge and the biohub decisions are the couple's personal philanthropy, not a Meta corporate program. Meta's shareholders are not paying for it. The money comes from the shares Zuckerberg and Chan own, which they sell or donate over time. Either way, the structure matters for one big reason. It means the couple can decide when and how to spend.
6:14 And over the last year, they made a very clear decision about where most of the money should go. But how did a charity that once tried to fix schools end up betting everything on AI? In its early years, CZA spread its money across many causes. According to Fortune, early work included housing affordability in California, criminal justice reform and education with personalized learning software in schools. Some of those projects were praised, others were criticized or quietly scaled back. One project stood out from the start. In 2016, the couple launched Biohub, a nonprofit research center in San Francisco. Built with partners like UC San Francisco, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. Its long-term goal, as they described it then, was to help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.
7:20 Since 2016, the couple has donated about $4 billion to basic science research, according to AP's reporting cited by Fortune, and they have said they plan to double that over the next decade. CZI's operating budget is about $1 billion a year. Biohub has since grown into a network of research centers, partnering with universities, including Northwestern and Colombia. It funds scientists to work on the hardest questions in biology, and it shares tools and data openly with researchers around the world. CZI has also funded one of the biggest projects in modern biology, the human cell atlas, an international effort to map every type of cell in a human body. Think of it as a Google maps for the body. Without maps like that, AI models of cells would have nothing to learn from. So what changed?
8:23 In a blog post, Zuckerberg and Chan wrote that they are going all in on AI powered biology. And at an event, Zuckerberg said, "Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward." Biohub describes its work as frontier AI and frontier biology. That means building largecale AI models of how cells work, models of the immune system and tools to predict disease before it happens. The idea is to do for biology what large language models did for text. Shia GPT learned the patterns of human language from huge amounts of writing. Biohub wants AI to learn the patterns of life from huge amounts of biological data. One of the most ambitious ideas is the virtual cell.
9:18 Imagine a computer model so accurate that scientists could test how a cell reacts to a drug, a mutation, or a virus without touching a real cell. Experiments that take months and a lab could run in minutes on a computer. To train models like that, you need huge amounts of computing power. CZI has said it is building a large computing cluster dedicated to life science research, one of the biggest of its kind for nonprofit science. In the AI era, a charity that wants to cure disease needs GPUs as much as it needs test tubes. The shift came with pain. In early 2026, CZI cut about 70 jobs, roughly 8% of its staff, a spokesperson confirmed to Fortune. Some people moved to other teams. Others were let go because CZI needed more research heavy experts like data scientists and computational biologists.
10:26 So, the couple's charity now looks a lot like Meta itself. Fewer people in general roles, more engineers, more data, more computing power. The same strategy Zuckerberg uses to race for AI at Meta, he is now applying to the race to cure disease. And that matters because AI biology needs people who understand both worlds. A biologist who can write code or a machine learning engineer who understands proteins is rare and expensive. Tech companies, drug companies, and nonprofits are all competing for the same small group of experts. And the scale of Meta's own AI spending shows why this matters. Meta has said it plans to spend between 115 and 135 billion this year, much of it on data centers and AI. Zuckerberg wrote in 2025 that super intelligence is now in sight. Here is the connection. The more Meta's AI bet pays off, the higher Meta's stock goes. The higher the stock goes, the bigger Zuckerberg's fortune.
11:46 And the bigger the fortune, the more money is available in the for the Aviology mission. That loop also works in reverse. If the AI bubble fears that hit tech stocks this month turn into a real crash, the value of the pledge shrinks with it. A promise measured in shares is only as big as the share price. If you want to follow how the richest people in tech are spending their AI fortunes and what it means for the rest of us, subscribe to 2,100.
12:22 We cover the people and the money behind AI every day with sources for everything. Now, what about the other billionaires? Bill Gates set the template. His foundation plans to spend down roughly $200 billion and close its doors in 2045. Asked about Zuckerberg's giving, Gates said he is off to a very good start. Gates is also the man behind the giving pledge itself. He launched it in 2010 with Warren Buffett inviting the world's richest people to promise to give away the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes or in their wills. Zuckerberg and Chen signed it and so did many of the people in the AI race. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, promising to give away the majority of his wealth. In 2021, he publicly challenged the United Nations World Food Program, writing that if it could describe how $6 billion would solve world hunger, he would sell Tesla stock and do it. Jeff Bezos told CNN in 2022 that he plans to give away the majority of his fortune during his lifetime. He had already committed 10 billion to the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change and Sam Alman the head of open AI signed the giving pledge in 2024 together with his husband Oliver Molarin. So nearly every major figure in the AI race has promised at least on paper to give most of their money away.
14:13 The promises and actual giving are very different things. Critics of the giving pledge point out that many signers fortunes have grown much faster than their donations. That is not illegal, but it means the size of the promise keeps growing while the money that actually leaves their hands grows more slowly. So, can AI really cure disease? The most famous proof so far is Alpha Fold from Google Deep Mind. It predicted the three-dimensional shape of proteins, a problem that had challenged biologists for 50 years. In 2024, Demiy's Hassabis and John Jumper shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for it was David Baker.
15:03 Habibis has said that with AI the end of disease could be within reach possibly within the next decade. That is an extraordinary claim but it comes from someone who has already won a Nobel Prize for using AI in biology. anthropic Dario Amodurai made a similar case in his essay machines of loving grace. He argued that AI could compress the progress biologists would have made in 50 to 100 years into just 5 to 10 years.
15:38 He calls it the compressed 21st century. And Nvidia's Jensen Hang has made biology one of the biggest markets for his chips. Drug companies and research labs are buying Nvidia hardware to run protein models, design molecules, and simulate experiments. Every AI biology dream runs on someone's GPUs. Biology is much harder than text or images. A model can suggest a new drug in seconds, but testing it safely in humans still takes years of clinical trials. No AI has yet produced a cure that reached patients faster because of it alone. The hard part is not just discovery. It is proof.
16:28 The numbers are sobering. Industry estimates often say a new drug takes 10 years or more and costs over a billion dollars to reach patients and most candidates fail along the way. If AI can cut even a few years or a fraction of those failures, the impact would be enormous. But it cannot make the process disappear. There are hopeful signs. The COVID vaccines showed that when science, money, and urgency line up, a process that usually takes many years can move in about one year, the vaccine makers did not skip safety trials. They ran steps in parallel and had years of earlier research to build on. AI biology hopes to make that kind of speed normal.
17:21 That is why scientists welcome the money but warn against hype. AI can help find targets, design molecules, and predict which experiments will work. But I cannot skip the steps that make sure a medicine is safe. If the billionaires promise too much too fast, the public could lose trust when a cures take longer. And there are bigger criticisms. Some argue that billionaires should simply pay more taxes and let democratic governments decide how to spend the money instead of a family deciding which diseases matter most. That debate is live right now in California where Zuckerberg and many tech billionaires live. Fortune reported that Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on California billionaire's net worth was trailing 55 to 45% as of November 6th with ballots still being counted and Meta created a new class of stock that Zuckerberg could sell to cover a potential California tax bill. Others point to the conflict between Zuckerberg's two roles. As the head of Meta, he runs platforms that critics have blamed for harms to teenagers mental health and for spreading misinformation. As a philanthropist, he funds research to improve human health. Critics ask whether one balances the other. Meta has said it invests heavily in safety tools for teens and disputes many of those claims.
19:05 Supporters answer that whatever you think about meta 4 billion for basic science is real money doing real research. Biohub funds scientists builds tools and shares data openly. And if even one major disease is cured faster because of it, millions of people will benefit. But Zuckerberg is not alone in this race. There is a race happening inside AID itself. Google Deep Mind spun out isomorphic labs to design drugs with AI. Open AI and anthropic are working with drug companies and research labs. Nvidia invests in AI biology startups and now one of the richest families in the world is putting most of its giving into the same field. What makes Biohub different is that it is nonprofit and shares much of its work openly. A company like Isomorphic Labs wants to own the drugs it designs.
20:11 Biohub's goal is to build tools and data that any scientist can use. If that works, it could speed up the whole field, not just one company. That is also how Zuckerberg talks about AI and meta. He has argued that openly sharing AI models speeds up progress and makes AI safer. Whether you agree or not, his philanthropy and his business now follow the same philosophy.
20:42 Build big, share widely, move fast. And the timing is not random. AI models for biology are improving fast. The cost of reading DNA has fallen dramatically, and computing power is cheaper per calculation than ever. For the first time, it is possible to collect and model biological data at scale that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. And unlike most tech products, the rewards here would be shared by everyone. A cure for a disease does not care whether you use Facebook, drive a Tesla, or shop on Amazon. That is why even critics of big tech often say this is one of the best possible uses of a tech fortune if the money truly flows.
21:35 So what does this mean for you? First, the hopeful side. If AI biology delivers even part of its promise, diseases like Alzheimer's, certain cancers, and rare genetic disorders could see new treatments faster than anyone expected. That could change the life of someone you love. Second, your data. AI biology needs enormous amounts of health and genetic data. Expect more requests to share your medical data with research projects. Read what you sign. Ask who will use it and whether it can be linked back to you. Third, your money. If you own an index fund, you own Meta, Nvidia, Alphabet, and Microsoft, the companies driving both AI and AI biology. their success or failure affects your retirement and also how much these billionaires can actually give away. In a strange way, millions of ordinary investors are part of this story, too.
22:45 And fourth, keep the hype in check. When you hear that AI will cure all disease, remember that real medicines still need years of trials. Celebrate real progress, but be skeptical of anyone selling miracle cures, especially online. Scammers love to borrow the language of big science, and AI makes their fake ads look more convincing than ever. What should you watch next?
23:15 Results from Biohub's AI models, especially any virtual cell tools other scientists can actually use. Whether CZI publishes clear numbers on how much it gives each year, the final count on California's billionaire tax and Meta's stock, which still sets the size of the whole pledge. Also watch the other billionaires. If Musk, Bezos, and Altman start moving their fortunes into AI biology too, the money available for medical research could explode. If they do not, the gap between their promises and their giving will keep growing.
23:58 Either way, the public will be watching the numbers, not just the announcements. And watch the AI companies themselves. Google, Deep Mind, Open AI, Anthropic, and Meta all talk about AI for science. Their models could become the engines that charities like Biohub run on. The line between tech business and medical research is getting thinner every year. Let us be clear about what is known. Zuckerberg and Chan pledged 99% of their shares in 2015. They have given about $4 billion to basic science since 2016. And they say Biohub and AI powered biology are now the main phobus of their giving.
24:46 What is not known is how fast the rest of the money will be given, how much the pledge will be worth when it is, and whether AI can truly deliver the medical revolution its biggest fans promise. Those answers will take years, maybe decades. And they will depend not only on Zuckerberg and Chan, but on thousands of scientists, patients who join trials, and regulators who decide what is safe.
25:17 10 years ago, a young father wrote a letter to his newborn daughter, promising to leave the world better than he found it. Today, that promise is worth more than $200 billion, and it rests on a single bet that artificial intelligence can help end disease. If the bet pays off, it could be the most important thing any tech billionaire ever does with their money, more important than any app, any phone, or any social network. If it does not, it will be one of the most expensive lessons in the history of science. So, what do you think? Should billionaires like Zuckerberg give their money to AI science, or should they pay more in taxes instead? Tell me in the comments.