Amazon.com Inc. founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos today announced on social media that he’s setting up a $10 billion philanthropic fund to support climate action.

The Bezos Earth Fund will be personally financed by Bezos (pictured), the world’s richest man with a fortune estimated at $130 billion by Bloomberg.

The Amazon CEO wrote in an Instagram post announcing the initiative that he plans to “fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.” An anonymous source elaborated to Axios that none of the money will be allocated to for-profit companies. 

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Today, I’m thrilled to announce I am launching the Bezos Earth Fund.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals. ⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ I’m committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we all have in common — let’s protect it, together.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ – Jeff

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) on Feb 17, 2020 at 10:00am PST

Bezos wrote that the fund will begin issuing grants this summer.

The launch of the Bezos Earth Fund follows several years in which Amazon has been taking steps to curb its carbon footprint. In September, the company set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2040 and revealed plans to buy 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian Automotive Inc., a Michigan auto startup. Rivian raised $1.3 billion in funding three months later from a group of investors that included Amazon.

Other tech giants are also investing in environmental preservation. Microsoft Corp., Amazon’s biggest rival in the cloud market, recently unveiled a $1 billion fund through which it will support startups and other organizations developing technologies that could help cut its CO2 emissions.

The $1 billion investment is part of a broader initiative by Microsoft meant to help it become “carbon negative” by 2030. That means the company wants to pull more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it produces. It hopes to achieve that goal through a combination of an internal carbon tax, other policy changes and new technologies such as direct air capture machines.

Alphabet Inc., in turn, is developing flying wind turbines and geothermal energy systems, while  Apple Inc. is working to reduce its supply chain’s carbon emissions. 

Photo: Jeff Bezos/Twitter