Mark Zuckerberg and His Wife Just Had a Baby — and Will Give Away Their Facebook Fortune

On the occasion of the birth of their first child, Facebook CEOMark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan declared on Tuesday that they plan to give away 99 percent of their shares in Facebook to a newly created charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The announcement was delivered in a Facebook post that was styled as a letter to the couple's newborn daughter, Max.

"As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation," the couple wrote. "We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others."

In making the announcement, Zuckerberg said he had informed the company that he would be selling or gifting up to $1 billion of his stock for each of the next three years. A timeline for the rest of the distribution was left unclear.

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The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is described on its Facebook page as a project that will "seek to advance human potential and promote equality." The philanthropic project promises major long-term investments, but is unclear on specifics. It says that its mission is to "advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research, and energy."

In recent years Zuckerberg has positioned himself as a major charitable giver, a move that is becoming more and more common among tech moguls. He and Chan have given away millions to charter schools and education charities. In 2010, he announced live on Oprah that he would donate $100 million to Newark public schools — though much of that money was ultimately paid to consultants and failed to improve the district's performance. Many observers also groaned that his gift to the city would have gone farther if he had donated the equivalent amount in Facebook stock rather than cash.

That experience has not deterred Zuckerberg's charitable efforts. Earlier this week, he joined the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group convened by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to amass a multi-billion dollar clean energy fund.

In today's announcement, Zuckerberg and Chan framed the decision as a generational obligation.

"For your generation to live in a better world, there is so much more our generation can do," they wrote. "Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today."