Making AI work for more people
A new partnership with Anthropic to build AI tools in global health, education and agriculture
May 14, 2026
Artificial intelligence is advancing quickly, but for billions of people, access remains out of reach.
Many of the most powerful tools remain concentrated among those with the most resources, while those working at the frontlines of some of the toughest health, education, and agricultural challenges often lack tools designed for their contexts and needs.
Closing that gap requires designing with equity as the goal. It means directing resources toward the problems and communities that are often overlooked, working with those closest to the challenges, and building alongside the people and systems AI-enabled solutions should also serve. This includes health workers, teachers, policy makers, and farmers in low- and middle-income countries and underserved communities in the U.S.
A new, multi-year partnership between the Gates Foundation and Anthropic aims to apply this approach in practice
The partnership brings together each organization’s resources and expertise toward shared goals, and includes commitments of $200 million over four years in grant funding, API credits, and technical support to develop AI tools and shared public goods — freely available resources — across health, education, and agriculture.
At its core, the collaboration aims to make AI tools more accessible and more useful in the places they’re needed most. By bringing together Anthropic’s AI expertise and the Gates Foundation’s programmatic experience of working with scientists, governments healthcare and underserved communities, the partnership supports country-led efforts to integrate AI into existing systems—so these tools reach more people and work in ways that reflect their needs.
By investing in shared public goods, including datasets, benchmarks, and infrastructure, the partnership aims to help ensure progress in one country or community can inform and accelerate progress in others.
Starting where AI can make the biggest difference
The work will begin with a set of global applications across health, education, and agriculture—areas that shape daily life for billions of people.
In health, the partnership will focus on applying AI to accelerate the development of vaccines and other critical innovations, while making large, complex datasets more accessible, interactive, and actionable for researchers and decision-makers. Initial efforts will center on systems that help scientists analyze data, generate insights, and move more quickly toward new breakthroughs. Early applications include life-saving childhood vaccines, as well as new prevention and treatment approaches for cervical cancer and preeclampsia.
In parallel, the partnership will modernize the data systems that track disease and health trends, connecting information across sources so public health leaders have sharper insights at their fingertips. This includes work with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) on the Global Burden of Disease study well as partnerships with governments to help public health leaders make more informed decisions.
In education, the partnership will focus on building the shared infrastructure needed to make AI a more effective tool for teaching and learning. By improving how AI models understand student progress and where gaps exist, this work will help teachers identify where students are struggling earlier and provide more targeted, personalized support. The work will also help students with AI-enabled college and career navigation, creating infrastructure that supports learners with strong, accurate guidance across their trajectory through education and into the workforce.
Across these areas, the aim is to support the people already driving progress, extending their reach through shared, open assets that educators, researchers, and policymakers can access and build on.
In agriculture, the partnership will support tools that help farmers make more reliable, real-time decisions using locally relevant data, delivered in local languages. AI makes it possible to provide more personalized, timely guidance on planting decisions, soil health, crop disease, livestock care, and market conditions—directly to farmers. This work will help make that guidance more accessible and affordable at scale, benefiting farmers as well as the extension workers, financial institutions, and public agencies that support them.
Designed with communities
The measure of success is how well technology works in the real world—whether a farmer in Kenya gets better advice in her language, a teacher in India can tailor lessons to meet each student where they are, and a health worker in Nigeria can treat more patients without working longer hours. That only happens when the people closest to the problem are part of building the solution.
Initial projects will expand based on what works, guided by governments, partners and communities, with a focus on ensuring solutions are safe, reliable, and useful in real-world, high-stakes environments.
This partnership builds on the foundation’s and Anthropic’s broader AI efforts, working with governments, researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs to apply AI where it can have the greatest impact—and to help countries build the systems needed to benefit from it.
Read more about the Foundation’s work on AI for Equity here. For Anthropic’s perspective on the partnership, read their blog post here.