Tech billionaires including Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg promised 18 million masks to fight COVID-19

In a Facebook post on Sunday Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook will be donating it had left over from the California wildfires while it works on sourcing "millions more."

Facebook was not immediately available for comment when asked by Business Insider how many millions of masks it is aiming to provide.

In an email to CleanTechnica on Saturday Elon Musk said Tesla and SpaceX have 250,000 N95 masks ready to start sending out. "Aiming to start distributing those to hospitals tomorrow night," Musk added in the email.

Responding to a user on Twitter on Sunday asking for him to send aid to hospitals in Louisiana, Musk seemed to both promise N95 masks and criticize them for being unwieldy.

"We'll try to get & deliver as many as possible. N95 masks are a pain to wear btw [by the way]. Less onerous masks are better most of the time," said Musk.

On Sunday a researcher at the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) also received 50,000 masks from Elon Musk, The Seattle Times reports.

Musk has also promised that Tesla and SpaceX will dedicate resources to manufacturing ventilators for hospitals, although Musk has simultaneously shown disbelief that there will be any shortage of the machines.

Musk told CleanTechnica however that the companies: "should have over 1000 ventilators by next week."

We’ll try to get & deliver as many as possible. N95 masks are a pain to wear btw. Less onerous masks are better most of the time.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeted Sunday that Salesforce had already donated 9,000 masks to the University of California Medical Center, and is working on distributing a total of 5 million masks this week plus extra protective equipment.

Thank you to our Ohana for delivering our first 9000 masks to UCSF. We are working hard across all of our resources & relationships to deliver an additional 5 million masks this week plus additional critical PPE. All of us need to focus on getting PPE to our local hospitals. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/y7mgL0KhrT

Looking farther afield than Silicon Valley, Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma has so far promised masks to 90 countries.

Jack Ma joined Twitter earlier this month to make his first announcement that his charitable organisation would be donating one million masks (alongside 500,000 coronavirus testing kits) to the US.

Since then he has announced that he will be shipping 100,000 masks to every single African country (meaning a total of 5.4 million),

On Saturday he announced 1.8 million masks would be distributed among Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

He then said a further two million would go towards 24 Latin American countries.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined the ways his company is teaming up with medical and research organizations to provide software tools in the COVID-19 fight.

Company president Brad Smith also outlined how the firm's supply chain has been commandeered to provide protective equipment for medical workers. An initial batch of supplies has been delivered to Seattle, where the firm is headquartered.

As businesses mobilize, our global supply chain team is hard at work securing much-needed supplies for healthcare workers. On Fri, the first 5 pallets of PPE arrived, including:
- 15,000 protection goggles
- Infrared thermometers
- Medical caps
- Protective suits pic.twitter.com/b3ShUUSfVI