Billionaires are walking away from the Giving Pledge.
If you do not recall the details, the Giving Pledge was a public promise to donate at least half of one’s wealth to charitable causes. Bill Gates, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett were initial signatories of the pledge when it launched in 2010. Since then, more than 250 donors have signed on.
Recently, however, some billionaires have been backing out, and the rate of new donors signing on has plummeted. The New York Times reported that only a handful of new signers joined in 2024 and 2025. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel told the paper that he had urged signers to revoke their commitments, and that many have expressed regrets about joining what Thiel calls an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club.” There’s no clear single reason for the decline of the pledge; some of it may be that billionaires have turned to political giving, or are reinvesting in their companies instead of giving to charity. Whatever the cause, the pledge has fallen out of fashion.
