The founder of the Amazon giant, Jeff Bezos, said he would contribute $10 billion of his wealth to efforts to curb global warming.
The richest person in the world announced his promise through a post on Instagram.
"Global warming is the biggest threat to our planet," he wrote. "I want to work with others to increase efforts to find new ways to counter the adverse effects of climate change. "
Bezos said, a program he called Bezos Earth Fund would start giving grants for that purpose next summer.
Prior to this, a number of billionaires including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and owner of the stock company Tom Steyer, had provided large funds to fight the effects of climate change.
The Amazon has come under fire from its own employees for not working enough on climate change. The Amazon company, which sends billions of packages every year creates huge greenhouse gas emissions because of the large number of airplanes, trucks and cars it uses to deliver these consumer goods to the world.
Last year, Bezos was determined to make the giant retailer carbon neutral by 2040.