Billionaire Bill Gates will simultaneously fund the development of seven different coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines to discover a fix as quickly as possible — even if it wastes billions of dollars, The Next Web reports.

The Microsoft co-founder revealed his intention while appearing on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Gates, one of the world’s richest people, left the boards of Microsoft and investment house Berkshire Hathaway in March to better focus on his philanthropic endeavours.

“Our early money can accelerate things. Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying which vaccine works and then building the factory,” said Gates.

There have been just under 1.3 million globally recorded COVID-19 cases, with over 70,000 deaths. Some 271,000 people are considered to have recovered from the infectious flu-like disease.