The Gates Foundation pledged $1 billion over the next two years to expand access to artificial intelligence in low-income communities, with funding directed toward education, healthcare, agriculture and digital infrastructure. The foundation will emphasize AI models trained in local languages and grounded in region-specific data, while a separate partnership with Anthropic will broaden access to AI tools. The annual Goalkeepers Report said roughly 1 billion people, mostly English speakers, are benefiting from advancing AI systems, while another 7 billion remain largely excluded. It said speech-recognition tools fail less than 6% of the time in English but more than 60% of the time in Yoruba. Bill Gates described a 12-to-18-month window to make AI work across languages, use local data and help communities deploy the technology themselves. He also urged a slower pace of development, citing risks to safety and disruption across industries. The foundation said it plans to give away $200 billion before winding down operations in 2045.