Anthropic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are putting $200 million toward AI tools designed for some of the world’s hardest-to-reach needs, from neglected disease research to classroom support and economic mobility. The four-year partnership combines grant funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support for programs in the U.S. and abroad, with a focus on areas that often attract less commercial investment despite their public impact.
The largest part of the partnership will focus on health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, where billions of people lack access to essential health services. Anthropic and the Gates Foundation plan to support work that helps researchers screen vaccine and therapy candidates for high-burden and neglected diseases, starting with polio, HPV, and eclampsia/preeclampsia. The goal is to help scientists evaluate potential treatments earlier and more efficiently before moving into pre-clinical development.
The partnership will also support public health decision-making. Anthropic will work with the Institute for Disease Modeling, a Gates Foundation research group, to make disease forecasts more accessible to health workers, researchers, and government partners. Those tools could help ministries and local health organizations plan workforce needs, manage medical supply chains, and respond to outbreaks involving diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.
Education is another major focus. The organizations plan to develop public tools, including datasets, benchmarks, and knowledge graphs, to evaluate how AI performs in areas such as math tutoring, curriculum design, literacy programs, and college advising. The first of these resources is expected to be released publicly later this year through the Global AI for Learning Alliance, which supports students in the U.S., India, and sub-Saharan Africa.
The partnership will also fund economic mobility programs, including tools for smallholder farmers and workers seeking new career pathways. Anthropic said the effort will include agriculture-specific improvements to Claude, local crop datasets, and benchmarks to evaluate AI use in farming applications. In the U.S., the partners will also support portable records for skills and certifications, career guidance tools, and data systems that measure which workforce training programs improve jobs and wages.
