Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking steps toward fulfilling his promise to donate 99 percent of his Facebook stock to charity.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan made their first cash infusion into their for-profit charitable group, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). On Wednesday and Thursday they sold 767,905 shares they had transferred to the organization, which was worth about $95 million, according to CNN Money.
A spokesperson for CZI declined to specify to The Huffington Post what projects the recent transaction will fund.
Zuckerberg and Chan announced the launch of CZI in December in a letter to their newborn daughter, Max. The couple pledged to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares ― or around $45 billion ― to the cause.
“For your generation to live in a better world, there is so much more our generation can do,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter. “Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges.”
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s investments will focus on education, curing diseases, and community building, according to the group’s website. The initiative, formed as a limited liability company (LLC), is able to fund nonprofits, as well as make private investments and political donations.
The group’s first major investment, made in June, was to fund start-up Andela, a group that trains and recruits software developers in Africa.
“We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not,” Zuckerberg said in a statement in June. “Andela’s mission is to close that gap.”
This influx of cash may only be a drop in the bucket for Zuckerberg. He can give away up to $1 billion per year for the next three years, according to the December announcement.
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