Melinda French Gates tells new IPO millionaires: give away at least half

SpaceX just set a record IPO by raising $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, and Fortune reports that OpenAI and Anthropic are soon to follow to the public markets. That combination is about to mint a new generation of IPO millionaires and even billionaires. And as with every prior wealth wave, the real question is not whether they will have money. It is what they will do with it once they have it.

Melinda French Gates, cofounder of the Giving Pledge and a philanthropist with her own firm, Pivotal, gave Fortune blunt advice when asked what she tells this new cohort. “Commit now to giving at least half of it away,” she said. She framed it as non-negotiable and universal for anyone who can participate in IPOs: “No matter what it turns out to be, no matter how large, how small it turns out to be. If you even have the ability to invest in these IPOs, believe me, you have the ability to give half away.” The core idea is simple, and it is aimed at decisions that will be made in the immediate aftermath of liquidity.

French Gates co-founded the Giving Pledge in 2010, a promise the ultra-wealthy can make to give away their money either in their lifetimes or in their wills. She pledged to distribute the majority of her resources within her lifetime, and for years much of that giving flowed through the Gates Foundation, which she cofounded with ex-husband Bill Gates. There, she tackled causes spanning global health, and today her giving is broader, shaped by her current work and priorities through Pivotal. Fortune notes she has given to causes including women’s health, women’s political power, caregiving, and more.

A concrete example from her current portfolio of commitments is her recent $215 million philanthropic commitment to women’s health, including women’s midlife health and menopause. That detail matters because it puts flesh on the “give half away” message. It is not just a general philosophy; it is tied to specific problem areas and to the kind of multi-year funding plans that can outlast the excitement of a public market debut.

Zoom out and the Giving Pledge context becomes more than inspirational branding. More than 250 philanthropists have signed it, including Warren Buffett, fellow Pledge cofounder; Canva cofounders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht; MacKenzie Scott; Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky; and Spanx founder Sara Blakely. French Gates also draws admiration from philanthropists like Scott, who has set records with her giving to historically Black colleges and universities, and Alice Walton, who is building a new kind of medical school. In other words, the pledge ecosystem has an existing playbook for turning extreme liquidity into long-term institutions, not just one-off charitable moments.

There is also a cultural argument running alongside the financial one. French Gates tells Fortune she admires a particular style of wealth stewardship, saying she has “never thought it’s good for billionaires to be flashy about their wealth.” Her point is not about banning personal spending, it is about signaling and social impact. “You see it with people who have a million dollars, you see it with people who have $100,000,” she says. “Flashing that around, that doesn’t do anybody any good. Fine, buy some nice things for yourself, but you don’t have to be flashy about it.” That stance lands differently when you connect it to IPO moments. Public listings can turn everyday employees, early investors, and founders into headline characters overnight, and the temptation is to convert sudden valuation into public lifestyle theater.

French Gates adds another angle that is less about personal brand and more about national opportunity. She reminds readers that “anyone who is a billionaire in the U.S. benefitted from growing up” in this country or from coming here as an immigrant. She links that to tangible inputs that make success more possible: good roads, access to education, and, for the most part, health care. For anyone who will be deciding how to allocate IPO proceeds, that framing matters because it suggests the moral accounting is not abstract. It is tied to the enabling systems that helped build the business models now being valued at scale.

Finally, it is worth noting where this advice sits in the broader IPO mechanics and timing. Mega-IPOs like SpaceX create massive liquidity events quickly, and the winners typically face immediate choices: taxes, diversification, estate planning, and how to structure giving to match lifetimes and wills. Regulators, boards, and founders are focused on disclosure and governance, but the long arc is still controlled by individuals. If French Gates is right that someone investing in these IPOs also has the ability to give half away, then the second-order effect is that this cohort might not just shape markets. It may shape the philanthropic agenda for years, at a scale that can redraw priorities in areas like women’s health and caregiving, where she is already committing resources.