Mark Zuckerberg’s charity organisation is cutting jobs and the reason is linked to Bill Gates’ Gates Foundation that is shutting down in …
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) – the philanthropy organisation founded by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Prisicila Chan has cut roughly 8% of its workforce, reports Fortune. The job cut, impacting around 70 employees, comes as the company plans to expand its biomedical and science focus through Biohub. The move “underscores how big donors are racing to back science-heavy, tech-centric projects such as peers like the Gates Foundation,” the report said. For those unaware, Gates Foundation was founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates. The foundation, which plans to shut down in 2045, has announced to donate a whopping $9 billion in 2026 alone “primarily focused on health care and disease research.”
Layoffs at Mark Zuckerberg’s charity
CZI aims to concentrate its resources on Biohub, a growing network of biomedical research institutes that aims to “cure or prevent all disease. As explained in the Fortune report, the job cuts come as CZI is stepping “a little further back from its original focus areas of education, criminal justice reform, housing, and community development” and “now needs employees with expertise in their new coverage areas”. The laid off employees will get 60-days notice period along with a severance package with 16 weeks of base pay, health insurance, and a $10,000 stipend.
CZI’s focus on Biohub
Biohub is a nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Chan and Zuckerberg to help scientists cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the century. Established in 2016 Biohub is a key part of CZI and has an operating budget of about $1 billion per year. Since its inception, the couple has donated $4 billion to basic science research, and aims to double it in the next decade. Speaking during an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City in November last year, Zuckerberg said “I feel like the science work that we’ve done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done”. “So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward,” quoted an Associated Press report then.In a November 2025 blog post, the couple wrote “We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives. There will be many challenges, but we believe that achieving some of humanity’s long-term dreams will also come within reach.”
Gates Foundation to cut up to 500 jobs by 2030
In a related news, Bill Gates has started putting in place the first major steps toward closing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s most-influential philanthropic organisation. The foundation’s board has approved a cap on operating costs, limiting them to $1.25 billion a year, or about 14% of its budget. To meet that limit, the organisation will reduce its workforce by 500, including by leaving some positions unfilled.
