Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Square, said Tuesday that he is devoting $1 billion of his stake in the mobile payments company, or 28 percent of his net worth, to help fund coronavirus relief efforts.
“I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief,” Dorsey tweeted.
Dorsey’s investment in coronavirus relief is the most significant financial pledge by a private individual to date. Several other current and former tech executives, including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, have each pledged $100 million.
Unlike other donors, Dorsey also promised to keep a consistently updated public record of all the donations.
Once the pandemic is over, Dorsey said, the rest of the $1 billion will be dedicated to “girl’s health and education, and UBI,” which is short for Universal Basic Income, a program that calls for each person to receive a certain amount of money from the government every month.
I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://t.co/hVkUczDQmz
— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020
“Why UBI and girl’s health and education? I believe they represent the best long-term solutions to the existential problems facing the world,” he wrote.
Dorsey said he was pulling money from Square and not Twitter for a simple reason:
“I own a lot more Square. And I’ll need to pace the sales over some time.”