Twitter founder Jack Dorsey pledges $1 billion donation to fight coronavirus

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Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has pledged to donate a $1bn (£800m) to fund coronavirus research in a bid to “disarm this pandemic.”

Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006 and later created payments company Square, confirmed that he was donating $1bn of Square shares to a charitable fundcalled Start Small, in order to “fund global Covid-19 relief.”

The 43-year-old tech mogul, who is worth approximately $3.9bn, said the donation was equivalent to about “28% of my wealth.”  It marks the biggest single donation to the global fight against coronavirus to date.

He added: “After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI.”

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

It marks the biggest single donation so far to the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Other pledges have come from Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who has said he will donate $100m to the charity Feeding America.

“Even in ordinary times, food insecurity in American households is an important problem, and unfortunately Covid-19 is amplifying that stress significantly,” the Amazon mogul wrote on Instagram.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, set up by the Microsoft founder and his wife, has also given $100m to efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.

At the time of writing, coronavirus has claimed the lives of over 82,000 people across the globe.

The UK remains in lockdown, with citizens ordered to stay at home except to shop for food and medicine, for only one form of exercise per day, and to travel to and from essential workplaces.

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