Early in March 2020, the Gates Foundation bankrolled $125 million of tax-deductible grants to support drug makers to develop coronavirus treatments.30 Gates and/or his foundation had large equity stakes in many of the pharmaceutical companies that received these funds—including Gilead. On April 24, 2020, Gilead’s volunteer spokesperson Bill Gates declared: “For the novel coronavirus, the leading drug candidate in this category is remdesivir from Gilead.”
