evidence: Bill Gates is not himself releasing mosquitoes into the wild. However, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did award grants that funded biotech company Oxitec's work to develop genetically modified mosquitoes that may help reduce the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases in certain locations around the world. In April 2021, it was announced that Oxitec would release approximately 150,000 mosquitoes across six locations in Florida. However, the company told Snopes that this particular project was not funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [...] Snopes readers asked our team to dig deeper into the project and its rumored funding. In short, we found that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did award grants to biotech company Oxitec for its work to develop a new strain of genetically modified mosquitoes nicknamed "Friendly™" to help reduce the spread of malaria. In April 2021, it was announced that approximately 150,000 mosquitos would be released across six locations in Florida. [...] "Oxitec's second-generation A. aegypti are the only mosquitoes to have been released in the U.S. to date, and they are not funded by the Gates Foundation," a spokesperson for the company told Snopes, adding that the Florida project is fully funded by Oxitec. As of this writing, the project was still in Phase 1.