‘Give half away’, Melinda French Gates advices new wave of IPO millionaires – Here’s why
The biggest wave of IPOs in Wall Street history is about to create a new generation of millionaires and billionaires. One of the world’s most prominent philanthropists says they need to decide now what they plan to do with the money.
SpaceX recently completed the largest IPO in history, raising $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. OpenAI and Anthropic are also expected to come to public markets soon. With these three lists coming together, a new group of extraordinarily wealthy individuals will emerge, many of whom are young and many of whom are receiving life-changing sums for the first time.
Melinda French Gates, who has been thinking for decades about what the ultra-rich should do with their wealth, has clear and direct advice for them all.
“Commit to donating at least half now,” he said Luck. “No matter what it turns out to be, no matter how big it is, no matter how small it is. Even if you have the ability to invest in these IPOs, believe me, you have the ability to give half.”
Who is Melinda French Gates and Why is She Overweight?
French Gates does not speak remotely. He is among the richest individuals in the world, with his current net worth estimated by Bloomberg at $19 billion, placing him at 137th in the global rankings of billionaires. More importantly, he has been one of the most active architects of large-scale organized philanthropy in the modern era.
In 2010, with Warren Buffett, he co-founded the Giving Pledge, a public pledge in which the ultra-rich pledge to give away most of their wealth during their lifetime or through their will. French Gates vowed to distribute most of his resources during his lifetime.
Over the years, this work has been channeled primarily through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she founded with her ex-husband Bill Gates and addresses issues involving global health.
She now runs her own philanthropic company, Pivotal, where her donations focus on women’s health, women’s political power and care. It recently announced a $215 million philanthropic commitment to women’s health, including women’s midlife health and menopause research.
The Giving Pledge and the Philanthropists French Gates Adores
More than 250 charities have now signed the Giving Pledge. Signatories include Warren Buffett, Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, MacKenzie Scott, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, and Spanx founder Sara Blakely.
French Gates spoke warmly about his fellow pledge signatories who are pushing the boundaries of what large-scale donations can achieve. It highlights Scott, who broke records with his donations to historically Black colleges and universities, and Alice Walton, of the Walmart Walton family, who is building a new kind of medical school.
French Gates Explains Why US Billionaires Owe Something
Melinda French Gates’ advice to the new class of IPO millionaires carries a broader argument about liability and context. Melinda French Gates reminds us that “everyone who becomes a billionaire in the United States has benefited from growing up in the country or coming there as an immigrant.” He points to good roads, access to education and often healthcare as the basic conditions that make it possible to establish successful businesses.
The implication is straightforward: Wealth on this scale is not created in a vacuum, and those who accumulate it in the United States do so in part because of the public infrastructure and institutional stability that others have helped build and maintain.
Melinda French Gates Also Has a Warning About Ostentatious Wealth
His advice to new billionaires goes beyond philanthropy. He is equally frank about the question of how to bring the new wealth to the public.
“I’ve never thought it was good for billionaires to be ostentatious about their wealth, because we’ve seen it at all levels of wealth over time,” he said. “You see it in people who have a million dollars, you see it in people who have $100,000. It doesn’t help anyone to show it off. OK, buy yourself nice things, but you don’t need to be flashy about it.”
Elon Musk Becomes the World’s First Trillionaire as SpaceX Shares Rise
In the background of French Gates’ words, a historical moment took place on Wall Street. SpaceX shares rose more than 19% on its first day of trading, opening at $150 and rising to nearly $168 before closing just below $161. At that closing price, the company had a market cap of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth-largest publicly traded U.S. company, surpassing even Tesla, the electric vehicle company of which Musk is also CEO.
Between his holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, Musk is currently estimated to be worth $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes, making him the first person in recorded history to surpass the trillion-dollar threshold in terms of personal net worth.
The $75 billion SpaceX raised through its IPO surpassed the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Shares were priced at $135 before trading began, and both institutional and retail investors moved quickly to secure allocations.
Why Has SpaceX Gone Public Now?
Musk said SpaceX, which he founded in 2002, is going public because it needs capital to fund an ambitious expansion into satellite networks, orbital data centers and artificial intelligence, as well as his long-stated goal of establishing a human colony on Mars.
He celebrated the opening of trading on the Nasdaq exchange by attending the ceremonial bell ringing at Starbase, SpaceX’s facility in South Texas, and used the opportunity to restate his goals.
“I don’t mean just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “No matter who you’re watching this from, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, Mars, and eventually beyond.”
A typical company going public saw a 7 percent increase on its first day of trading between 1980 and 2025, according to Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. SpaceX’s nearly 20% gain in its debut placed it well above that historical average; This reflected the size of investor appetite for a company that had operated outside public market scrutiny for two decades.
