KAMPALA, September 15, 2026 — The Gates Foundation plans to spend at least US$ 1 billion over the next two years to expand access to artificial intelligence [AI] and AI-enabled solutions, opportunities and knowledge, particularly among communities that have historically been left behind by technological advances.
This was announced at the launch of the foundation’s 10th annual Goalkeepers Report, which this year focuses on actions needed to ensure AI helps narrow the gap between the world’s richest and poorest communities rather than widen it.
The 2026 report, Make This Matter: AI, Equity, and the Choice We Can’t Delay, argues that the future direction of AI is not predetermined and that there is a limited window to influence who benefits from the technology and how quickly.
The report accessed by theCooperator News highlights examples of foundation-supported partners already using AI to improve lives in clinics, classrooms and smallholder farms.
“The Gates Foundation was created in part to address a basic market failure: the people with the greatest needs often have the least power to shape where innovation and investment go,” Bill Gates, Chair of the Gates Foundation, writes in the report.
“Much of our work has been about closing that gap. AI presents the same challenge, only at much greater speed. Left to the market alone, the most capable tools will be built first for the people and institutions most able to pay for them—not necessarily for those who could benefit most.”
The report identifies three areas where immediate action could help AI improve lives and livelihoods for more people in the coming years.
Make AI tools work in every language people speak. More than 90 percent of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources, leaving many communities poorly represented in the data used to develop the tools.
Build AI tools for the contexts in which people will use them. Effective AI tools require data and expertise from the communities and populations they are designed to serve, while countries and communities should have a say in how their data is managed and protected.
Invest in people and access so communities can shape how AI works for them. Doctors, farmers, teachers and developers need opportunities to learn how to evaluate AI tools and adapt them to their local contexts. They also need affordable access to the technology, which will require action by technology companies as well as investment from governments and philanthropic organisations.
The foundation said equitable access to the benefits of AI will not happen automatically. However, AI tools developed with the expertise of end users could put knowledge and advice in the hands of hundreds of millions of people who have not benefited from previous technology revolutions.
The US$1 billion commitment will support partners already working to close gaps in access to AI and ensure that AI tools reflect the knowledge and priorities of the people who need them most.
The funding will be distributed roughly across the foundation’s priority areas over the next two years:
- 40 percent for education, including AI tutoring to personalise student learning and teaching tools for use in classrooms in the United States and other countries;
- 40 percent for healthcare, including diagnostics and clinical decision-support tools for frontline health workers, maternal and newborn care, and the discovery of new drugs and vaccines;
- 10 percent for agriculture, including AI-generated advice for smallholder farmers tailored to their soil, weather and crop conditions; and
- 10 percent for digital infrastructure, including datasets in languages that existing AI tools do not yet adequately understand.
The foundation also called on governments, technology companies, philanthropists and other stakeholders to contribute resources and expertise towards making AI more useful, accessible and affordable.
“We can harness AI for good. But it won’t happen by accident,” Gates writes. “It requires a deliberate, specific commitment from government leaders and the companies developing the technology: to measure success not only by what AI can do for the most profitable users but by what it can do for the people who stand the most to gain.”
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