Mark Zuckerberg to give away 99 percent of his Facebook shares, or $45B, to charity during his lifetime

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Rick Wilking/Reuters

Along with his daughter’s birth, Mark Zuckerberg announced today that he will give away 99 percent of his Facebook shares, valued at around $45 billion today, to charity during his life time.

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, created the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The Facebook CEO announced his donation in a letter to his newborn daughter, Max.

Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges. I will continue to serve as Facebook’s CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives.

As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities.

We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.

PostbyChan Zuckerberg Initiative.

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