A generation of new millionaires and billionaires is about to be created by the largest IPO wave in Wall Street history. One of the world’s most prominent philanthropists says they should decide right now what they plan to do with the money.
SpaceX has just completed the largest initial public offering in history, raising $75 billion at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to follow to the public markets soon. Together, these three listings are set to produce a new cohort of extraordinarily wealthy individuals, many of them young, many of them first-time recipients of life-altering sums.
Melinda French Gates, who has spent decades thinking about what the ultra-wealthy should do with their fortunes, has clear and direct advice for all of them.
“Commit now to giving at least half of it away,” she told Fortune. “No matter what it turns out to be, no matter how large, how small it turns out to be. If you even have the ability to invest in these IPOs, believe me, you have the ability to give half away.”
Who Is Melinda French Gates and Why Is She Weighing In?
French Gates is not speaking from a position of distance. She is among the world’s wealthiest individuals, with a current net worth estimated at $19 billion by Bloomberg, which places her at number 137 on its global billionaires ranking. More significantly, she has been one of the most active architects of organised large-scale philanthropy in the modern era.
In 2010, she co-founded the Giving Pledge alongside Warren Buffett, a public commitment through which the ultra-wealthy promise to give away the majority of their wealth either during their lifetimes or through their wills. French Gates herself has pledged to distribute the majority of her resources within her lifetime.
For years, that work was channelled primarily through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she co-founded with her former husband Bill Gates, and through which she addressed causes spanning global health.
She now runs her own philanthropic firm, Pivotal, where her giving focuses on women’s health, women’s political power and caregiving. She 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 Admires
More than 250 philanthropists have now signed the Giving Pledge. Signatories include , MacKenzie Scott, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky and Spanx founder Sara Blakely.
French Gates has spoken warmly of fellow pledge signatories who have pushed the boundaries of what large-scale giving can achieve. She singles out Scott, who has set records with her giving 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 on Why US Billionaires Owe Something Back
Melinda French Gates advice to the incoming class of IPO millionaires carries a broader argument about obligation and context. s reminds that “anyone who is a billionaire in the US benefitted from growing up” in the country or coming there as an immigrant. She points to good roads, access to education and, for the most part, healthcare as the foundational conditions that make it possible to build successful businesses in the first place.
The implication is direct: wealth at this scale is not created in a vacuum, and those who accumulate it in the US do so in part because of public infrastructure and institutional stability that others helped build and maintain.
On Flashy Wealth, Melinda French Gates Has a Warning Too
Her counsel to new billionaires extends beyond philanthropy. On the question of how to carry new wealth publicly, she is equally straightforward.
“I’ve never thought it’s good for billionaires to be flashy about their wealth, like we’ve seen that over time at all levels of wealth,” she said. “You see it with people who have a million dollars, you see it with people who have $100,000. Flashing that around, that doesn’t do anybody any good. Fine, buy some nice things for yourself, but you don’t have to be flashy about it.”
Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Trillionaire as SpaceX Shares Soar
The backdrop to French Gates’ remarks is a historic moment on Wall Street. SpaceX shares jumped more than 19% on their first day of trading, opening at $150 and rising to around $168 before closing just below $161. At that closing price, the company carried a market valuation of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth largest publicly listed US company, surpassing even Tesla, the electric vehicle company Musk also leads as chief executive.
Between his holdings in is now estimated to be worth $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes, making him the first individual in recorded history to cross the trillion-dollar threshold in 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 SpaceX Went Public Now
Musk has said SpaceX, which he founded in 2002, is going public because it requires capital to fund an ambitious expansion into satellite networks, orbital data centres and artificial intelligence, as well as its long-stated goal of establishing a human colony on Mars.
He marked the opening of trading on the Nasdaq exchange by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from , and used the occasion to restate his ambitions.
“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”
The typical company going public has seen a 7% jump 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 near-20% gain on debut placed it well above that historical average, reflecting the scale of investor appetite for a company that has spent two decades operating outside public market scrutiny.