A tale of two leaders: what Elon Musk could learn from Bill Gates

In one corner is the bespectacled tortoise, Bill Gates. In the other, the chainsaw-wielding hare, Elon Musk. Each has a very different idea about what it means to give back.

Gates plans to ramp up his foundation's charitable giving to causes like public health and education over the next two decades, whereas Musk has used the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to nearly halt the flow of US foreign aid spending in a blink and dismantle the US Agency for International Development, which he has called a "criminal organization."

To be sure, these billionaires have very different mandates — Musk to cut government spending, and Gates to eradicate preventable diseases and spend down his vast fortune. But as Gates opens up his wallet even more, he's also squaring off with Musk. Gates is using a prolonged road map compared to Musk's move-fast-and-break-things tech ethos hat had him vowing to cut $2 trillion in government spending by employing methods from a startup playbook.

"Tech innovation works when a new widget disrupts the market for the old one," Michael Morris, a professor at the Columbia Business School, tells me in an email. "Development programs work best when there is continuity, steadiness, predictability, assurance." He says Gates' approach shows "maturity in thinking through the problem." That's a shift from when Gates was considered a sometimes combative and arrogant leader at Microsoft, even if he was heralded as a brilliant innovator. The Gates Foundation has been criticized, too, for lacking transparency and for some of its spending priorities. "These days Gates looks like a sage compared to Musk and compared to the administration," Morris says.

Gates announced last week that he plans to unwind the Gates Foundation in the next 20 years, bringing the philanthropic effort to a close sooner than expected. But instead of cutting spending, he's increasing it: The foundation plans to distribute $9 billion in 2026, and Gates hopes the foundation will double the $100 billion it has given away since its founding in 2000 and donate another $200 billion to public health and education causes by December 31, 2045.

Meanwhile, in a matter of days DOGE pulled the rug out from under the USAID earlier this year. Funding was first disrupted, leading to confusion and chaos, and now more than 80% of USAID's tens of billions of dollars in contractual commitments have been cut. Organizations across the world that depended on money from the US have been scrambling to try to carry out their missions, which include providing emergency food to malnourished kids and medication for HIV prevention and treatment.

President Donald Trump set Musk loose to curtail the federal government's spending and waste via DOGE. In a move that many constitutional scholars say went beyond the administration's authority by circumventing Congress, the administration focused on slashing costs now, regardless of the long-term impact on the world's most vulnerable people. Gates' plan is different: It shortens the initial foundation's closure timeline with the intent of solving problems more quickly and rendering itself obsolete.

Part of the stark contrast between Musk and Gates stems from their different approaches to "efficiency." With DOGE, Musk has embodied the chainsaw approach that tech startups worship — focusing on being lean and doing more with less under a founder-mode-style leader. That doesn't necessarily translate well in government: Management experts previously told me they viewed DOGE's rollout as "clumsy," "wrongheaded," and full of "political recklessness."

The Gates Foundation's idea of efficiency is to provide humanitarian aid by using the data-driven mentality of the tech industry alongside expertise from organizations that work directly with people in need. When it comes to giving back, Fatema Sumar, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, says Gates' effort "is a replicable model of data-driven, country-aligned long-term philanthropy that others could follow, and so far, few do."

It's no coincidence that the influx of funding comes as governments pull back, and Gates paired his announcement with jabs at Musk. "He's the one who cut the USAID budget," Gates told The New York Times, saying Musk had put it "in the wood chipper." When the interviewer noted that Musk had attached himself to the Giving Pledge, a concept initiated by Gates and Warren Buffett 15 years ago to encourage wealthy people to donate the majority of their assets to charity, Gates said: "The Giving Pledge — an unusual aspect of it that you can wait until you die and still fulfill it. So who knows? He could go on to be a great philanthropist. In the meantime, the world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children."

The two have been feuding over philanthropy for years. Walter Isaacson wrote in his biography of Musk that Gates visited Musk in 2022 and tried to convince him to give away more of his money. Musk told Gates that most philanthropy was "bullshit," and that Gates could do more for the climate if he invested in Tesla stock, which Gates had shorted. Musk later told Isaacson that Gates was "categorically insane."

Over the past 25 years, money from the Gates Foundation has helped reduce the spread of preventable diseases, including HIV and tuberculosis, worldwide. The foundation estimates it has saved 82 million lives. DOGE's vision is one in which the problems of other countries don't fall on the shoulders of the US. Researchers from Boston University estimated that tens of thousands of people may have already died from tuberculosis or AIDS since USAID funding was disrupted. Gates' fortune allows him to fill gaps left behind by the US government. "Much like Harvard's endowment empowers them to fight back on the attack on universities, Gates' endowment enables him to step in and provide some needed services that USAID had been providing," Morris says.

More money now rather than later is a more ambitious approach. Gates described to the Times how AI tools will bolster the foundation's goals to improve healthcare, education, and agriculture. "Given that I have these resources, what can we achieve? It makes a big difference to take the money and spend it now versus later," he said.

A century ago, the world's richest men gave birth to modern philanthropy by setting up charitable foundations that still exist, including the Rockefeller Foundation and two dozen organizations that bear Andrew Carnegie's name. Today's tech billionaires, the modern equivalent of the industrialist titans, have the opportunity to make an even bigger impact, thanks to rapid advances in medicine and technology — but few have. Gates himself has said that his foundation can't assume the philanthropic responsibilities of governments alone.

"Gates, like Carnegie and Rockefeller a century ago, defines an era," Sumar says. "But today's tech giants haven't matched yet his global ambition, and the world can't afford more people on the sidelines right now."

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

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