SAN FRANCISCO — Talk about birth announcements: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife said they’ll devote nearly all their wealth — roughly $45 billion — to philanthropy in celebration of their daughter, Max.
Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to a 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter last week. The couple posted the news on Facebook on Tuesday.
In the same post, Zuckerberg said he and Chan will commit 99 percent of their Facebook stock to such causes as fighting disease, improving education and “building strong communities.” The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will pursue those goals through a combination of charitable donations, private investment and promotion of government-policy reform.
Zuckerberg has committed to dispose of no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock every year for the next three years, the company said.
“Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” the Facebook co-founder and his wife wrote in a letter to their daughter.
In the letter, they described their goals as “advancing human potential and promoting equality,” and added: “We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking.”
Zuckerberg said the couple will transfer most of their wealth to the initiative “during our lives.” In a statement, Facebook described the initiative as not a foundation but “a limited liability company controlled by Mark and Priscilla.”
The couple previously donated large sums to public schools in Newark, N.J., and the San Francisco Bay Area, along with the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where Chan, a pediatrician, did her medical training.
