Gates Foundation to cut 500 jobs, launches Epstein review

The Gates Foundation is preparing to cut up to 500 jobs, about 20% of its workforce, over the next several years while also opening an external review of its past engagement with Jeffrey Epstein. If fully carried out, the reduction would bring the Seattle-based foundation’s headcount from 2,167 to roughly 1,667, a sizable reset for one of the world’s biggest philanthropic institutions.

The move lands at a moment when the foundation is still operating at enormous scale. It provided $8.0 billion in charitable support in 2024 and says its work reaches partners across the United States and in more than 130 countries. Its long-term goals are still ambitious: saving the lives of mothers, babies and children, ending infectious diseases, and expanding economic opportunity by 2045. A staffing cut of this size could force the organization to streamline program management, tighten grant oversight and do more of its global health and development work with fewer people.

That matters because the foundation’s spending plans are only getting larger. In its 2024 annual letter, the foundation said Bill Gates had announced a plan for it to spend $200 billion over the next 20 years. It also said it has already spent $100 billion since it was created 25 years ago. Against that backdrop, a long, phased reduction in staff signals not retreat but retrenchment: a leaner operating model for an institution that has become central to public health, poverty reduction, gender equality and U.S. programs.

The Epstein review adds a separate layer of pressure. In a February 2026 statement after emails were released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the foundation said a small number of employees had interacted with Epstein because he claimed he could mobilize significant philanthropic resources for global health and development. It said it never pursued collaboration with him, never created a fund with him, never paid him and never employed him. The foundation also said it regretted any employee interaction with Epstein and condemned the harm he inflicted on women and girls.

That review is likely to draw fresh attention because the Gates Foundation is not just another donor. It is a highly visible force in global health and development, and its choices carry symbolic weight across the nonprofit sector. The combination of job cuts and a public accounting of Epstein-related contacts suggests a broader effort to tighten governance, manage costs and protect credibility at a time when elite philanthropy is under sharper demands to prove both impact and accountability.