The Gates Foundation plans to give away $313 billion over the next 20 years before shutting down entirely in 2045.

The move, according to Bloomberg, marks a new deadline for one of history’s largest and most influential charities.

That target would represent a doubling in spending for the non-profit foundation which has disbursed more than $100 billion since it was co-founded by Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and Melinda Gates in 2000.

Originally, the foundation was set to close 20 years after Gate’s death.

“I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned,” Gates, 69, wrote in a statement.

“I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world,” he added in the statement quoted by Bloomberg yesterday.

The foundation’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Suzman told reporters that the giving will equate to roughly 99 per cent of Gates’ remaining fortune.

Gates is the fifth-richest person in the world with a net worth $ 168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He and his former wife, Melinda have given $60.2 billion to the foundation from its inception through 2024.

The foundation distributes billions of dollars a year to causes around the world — mainly health, global development and education.

The foundation has helped save 82 million lives through its efforts to increase access to vaccines in low-income countries and its global funding to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Apart from helping Nigeria to kick-out polio, the foundation has significantly facilitated healthcare access and increased agricultural productivity, especially for smallholder farmers in the country.

In its remaining 20 years, the non-profit group, which employs more than 2,000 people, will focus on ending preventable childbirth deaths, eliminating deadly infectious diseases and lifting people out of poverty.