Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Saturday, August 9th.

Today on Forbes, Bill Gates, Charles Koch, and three other billionaires are giving $1 billion

to boost economic mobility using AI.

It's getting harder to climb the economic ladder in America.

So five billionaires, who have all risen to great heights

from different starting points, have banded together in an attempt to reverse the trend and to restore

belief in the idea of the U.S. as a land of equal opportunity. On July 17th, the charitable

foundations of billionaires Bill Gates, whose net worth as of that date was $116.9 billion,

Charles Koch, worth $67.5 billion, Steve Balmer, worth $142.5 billion,

Intuit founder, Scott Cook, worth $7.7 billion, and hedge fund investor John Overdeck, worth $7.4 billion,

announced a more than $1 billion pledge to fund a new philanthropic vehicle focused on economic

mobility called Next Ladder Ventures. That entity will partner with artificial intelligence giant

anthropic and will support organizations

focused on using AI and other emerging technologies to improve the financial trajectory of low-income

Americans.

Koch wrote in his latest book, Believe in People, Bottom Up Solutions for a Top-down

World, quote, entire communities are coming apart at the seams, and upward mobility is

fading for huge numbers of people, especially those who need it most. Suicide rates are rising,

as are deaths from drug overdose. America is on a trajectory toward a two-tiered society,

one in which fewer people get ahead and more fall behind. Now,, with four other billionaire co-founders and Next Ladder Ventures, is hoping to help change that.

Next Ladder Ventures' CEO Ryan Ripple previously led the Gates Foundation's economic mobility efforts

and served as interim chief of staff to the Gates Foundation CEO and a special assistant

...