Billie Eilish to billionaires: “Give your money away, shorties”
Singer Billie Eilish has called out billionaires for hoarding wealth and said they should give it away during an awards show attended by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Eilish made her point clear during an acceptance speech at the 2025 Wall Street Journal Magazine Innovator Awards, where she was honored for her contributions to the music industry.
“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me,” Eilish told the audience at the Museum of Modern Art, filled with entertainment, arts, and business leaders, including Zuckerberg.
“If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but give your money away, shorties,” Eilish said.
While the singer did not mention Zuckerberg by name, there’s little doubt she made her remarks exactly because he was in the room. The billionaire was attending the show to support his wife, Priscilla Chan, who was the evening’s other honoree for her work in philanthropy.
In an Instagram post, Zuckerberg said he was “proud” of his wife for winning the award and for her work in “advancing science to cure and prevent diseases.”
As well as calling for billionaires to do more, Eilish is also leading by example. It was announced during the event that she would be donating $11.5 million in proceeds from her tour to organizations combating food insecurity and climate change, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fashion editor and stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who also attended the event, praised Eilish for her speech and for her efforts.
“I love Gen Z, they don't give a fuck. They will call Zuck an evil dork to his face, and thank god for that,” Karefa-Johnson said in a post on Threads, one of the social media platforms owned by Zuckerberg's Meta.
She also called his wife Chan “nauseatingly disingenuous and hypocritical” for accepting an award for philanthropy, describing her as “a wealth hoarder who actively supports an administration that defunds science… and regularly sells out the most vulnerable patients in this country.”
In an email to Cybernews, a spokesperson for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative noted that, to date, the pair has given away $7 billion and pledged in 2015 to give away 99% of their Meta (then Facebook) shares over their lifetimes. Zuckerberg is the world's third-richest man with a net worth of over $257 billion.
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Aside from Eilish and Chan, this year’s honorees included Hailey Bieber for her work in the beauty industry, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson for their work in design, Ben Stiller in entertainment, Spike Lee in film, and Hermès’s Nadège Vanhée in fashion.
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