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- Facebook
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- EffectiveAltruism
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- OpenPhilanthropy
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- Anthropic
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- DemocraticDonor
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summary: "Dustin Moskovitz is a cofounder of Facebook and the software firm Asana who, with his wife Cari Tuna, became the largest sustained funder of effective altruism through Open Philanthropy and one of the largest Democratic political donors, a political mirror image of his fellow Facebook beneficiary Peter Thiel."
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summary: "Facebook and Asana cofounder whose Good Ventures foundation funds Open Philanthropy, the chief backer of AI-safety policy, research and journalism; an early Anthropic investor and a leading Democratic donor."
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born: 1984-05-22
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location: "San Francisco, California"
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relations:
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- type: funded
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with: "[[Future Forward]]"
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start: 2020
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role: "46.89 million dollars in 2019-2020, 3.3 million in 2021-2022, 50 million in 2023-2024"
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fn: 16
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- type: funded
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with: "[[LCV Victory Fund]]"
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start: 2016
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role: "5 million dollars, with Cari Tuna"
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fn: 15
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- type: funded
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with: "[[For Our Future PAC]]"
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start: 2016
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role: "5 million dollars, with Cari Tuna"
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fn: 15
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created: 2026-06-19
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updated: 2026-06-19
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updated: 2026-09-23
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---
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Dustin Moskovitz (born May 22, 1984) is an American technology entrepreneur who cofounded [[Facebook]] with [[Mark Zuckerberg]] in 2004 and later cofounded the workplace-software company [[Asana]]. With his wife [[Cari Tuna]] he became the largest sustained funder of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement through [[Open Philanthropy]] and one of the largest Democratic political donors in the United States. His career traces the same Facebook fortune that made [[Peter Thiel]], the company's first outside investor, a billionaire, and his philanthropy and politics run in the opposite direction from Thiel's.[^1][^2]
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Dustin Moskovitz (born May 22, 1984) cofounded [[Facebook]] with [[Mark Zuckerberg]], his roommate at [[Harvard University]], where he studied economics. From February 2004 to November 2008 he held senior roles at Facebook, including chief technology officer and vice president of engineering. He then cofounded [[Asana]] with [[Justin Rosenstein]], and with his wife [[Cari Tuna]] established [[Good Ventures]], the foundation that supplies nearly all of the grant money of [[Open Philanthropy]], renamed Coefficient Giving in 2025.[^1][^2] *[[Semafor]]* wrote that its founders and many early employees "were sympathetic to the utilitarian philosophical movement known as [[Effective Altruism|effective altruism]]."[^3] [[Peter Thiel]] was Facebook's first outside investor.[^4]
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### Facebook and Asana
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### Asana
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Moskovitz was Zuckerberg's roommate at [[Harvard University]] and one of Facebook's founding team, serving as its first chief technology officer and head of engineering. He left in 2008 to cofound Asana with [[Justin Rosenstein]], took the company public in 2020, and built a second fortune; his net worth, derived chiefly from his early Facebook stake, exceeds sixteen billion dollars. He stepped down as Asana chief executive in March 2025 while remaining chairman.[^1][^3]
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Moskovitz has been an Asana director since December 2008 and its chairman since December 2019. He was chief executive from October 2010 to July 2025, and also chief financial officer from 2009 to 2017. Asana went public by direct listing on the [[New York Stock Exchange]] in September 2020.[^4] In 2026 he held 74.2 percent of the company's voting power through his own shares, the Dustin A. Moskovitz Trust, a Roth IRA and shares held by Good Ventures; he bought 19,273,127 shares in a private placement on September 7, 2022.[^1] In 2016 [[Sam Altman]] led a 50-million-dollar investment in Asana.[^5] [[Adam D'Angelo]], Facebook's chief technology officer from 2006 to 2008 and founder of [[Quora]], sat on Asana's board from December 2008 to 2026 while also a director of [[OpenAI]]; [[Matthew Cohler]] of [[Benchmark Capital]], another Facebook alumnus, was an Asana director from 2009 to 2026. Asana's 2026 proxy statement reported, as related-person transactions, 1.1 million dollars in AI services bought from [[Anthropic]], noting that Moskovitz "has a minority ownership interest in Anthropic," and 300,000 dollars bought from OpenAI, noting D'Angelo's seat on its board.[^1]
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Moskovitz retained roughly two percent of Facebook at its 2012 initial public offering, a stake worth several billion dollars that became the foundation of his wealth and his giving. Asana took its name from a yoga term and went public by direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2020. His March 2025 retirement announcement, in which he said he would transition out of the chief-executive role, was followed by a sharp drop in Asana's share price; he stayed on as board chair and remained the company's largest shareholder.[^1][^3]
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### Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy
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### Open Philanthropy and Effective Altruism
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Good Ventures, whose directors are Moskovitz, Tuna and [[Divesh Makan]], the controlling partner of [[ICONIQ Capital]], held 10.1 billion dollars in assets in mid-2025 and received 1.4 billion dollars in contributions that year.[^2][^6] Open Philanthropy had given away about 7 billion dollars by September 2026, most of it from the couple's fortune.[^3] Its grants include 30 million dollars to OpenAI in 2017, with a board seat for [[Holden Karnofsky]], whose grant page disclosed that the OpenAI researchers [[Dario Amodei]] and [[Paul Christiano]] were Open Philanthropy advisers who lived in Karnofsky's house;[^7] 55 million dollars in 2019 to launch the [[Center for Security and Emerging Technology]] at [[Georgetown University]] under the former IARPA director [[Jason Matheny]]; 16 million dollars in 2023 to the [[RAND Corporation]] after Matheny became its chief executive, "to be spent at the discretion of" Matheny; 5.16 million dollars in 2022 to the [[Center for AI Safety]]; and 36 million dollars in 2025 to [[Redwood Research]].[^8]
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In 2011 Moskovitz and Tuna founded Good Ventures, and they later joined with the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]] to create Open Philanthropy, which became the principal sustained financier of effective altruism, longtermism, and AI-safety work, directing more than four billion dollars in grants. The funding flowed to the same AI-risk research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] and the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] that [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] and [[Nick Bostrom]] built, and Open Philanthropy was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]]. Moskovitz signed the Giving Pledge, committing the majority of his wealth.[^2][^4]
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### Anthropic
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Good Ventures supplies nearly all of Open Philanthropy's grantmaking, making the foundation's reach a direct function of Moskovitz and Tuna's fortune; the organization's own analysis acknowledged that the movement's funding base rests heavily on the couple. Open Philanthropy's 2017 grant of 30 million dollars to [[OpenAI]] came with a board seat for co-chief-executive [[Holden Karnofsky]], an early instance of the foundation embedding itself inside an AI lab, and it later invested in Anthropic. Operating from November 2025 as Coefficient Giving, the organization began pooling money from outside donors so that other philanthropists could fund its cause areas alongside Good Ventures.[^2][^4]
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Moskovitz took part in Anthropic's first funding round of 124 million dollars in 2021, and in 2023 told *[[Politico]]* that "my goal in investing [in Anthropic] stems from the exact same place as our non-profit work" and that any returns "will be entirely redirected back into our philanthropic work." The Open Philanthropy grantmaker [[Luke Muehlhauser]] was then one of Anthropic's four directors, and Karnofsky had married Anthropic's president, [[Daniela Amodei]].[^5] Muehlhauser resigned from the board in May 2024, writing that it had become complicated to be both an AI governance grantmaker at Open Philanthropy and a director of a frontier AI company.[^9] In April 2026 the *[[Washington Examiner]]* reported that in 2025 Moskovitz had transferred his Anthropic stake, "which had reportedly grown to roughly $500 million, to his charity to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests."[^10] Asana's proxy statement of April 20, 2026 described Moskovitz as having "a minority ownership interest in Anthropic."[^1] *Semafor* called Coefficient Giving "a favorite of Anthropic executives"; its chief executive, [[Alexander Berger]], said in 2026: "We're definitely not the Anthropic Foundation."[^3]
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### Washington
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Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars in 2022 for the first fellows of the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks, among them the offices of Senators [[Martin Heinrich]], [[Mike Rounds]] and [[Todd Young]], whom [[Chuck Schumer]] had put in charge of AI legislation; *Politico* wrote that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon.[^5] Matheny served in the Biden [[White House]] from March 2021 to June 2022. According to documents the *Washington Examiner* obtained under the [[Freedom of Information Act]], he hired [[Ben Buchanan]], director of CSET's CyberAI project, under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, with Georgetown continuing to pay Buchanan's salary and the government reimbursing it; the paper noted that CSET had received 97 million dollars from Open Philanthropy between 2019 and 2021, and that Buchanan became an architect of the Biden export controls on advanced chips that Anthropic later urged the Trump administration to keep. Buchanan said he "scrupulously complied with all legal and ethics rules." Senator [[Ted Cruz]], who named Moskovitz in a 2024 letter, wrote that "large AI technology companies are influencing the Biden administration's AI policy from the inside."[^10]
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The lobbying arm of the Center for AI Safety stated that it secured 10 million dollars from Congress in 2024 to establish the [[U.S. AI Safety Institute]], where Christiano became head of AI safety.[^11] The 501(c)(4) [[Americans for Responsible Innovation]], founded in late 2023 by the former congressman [[Brad Carson]], lists Coefficient Giving among its funders with the [[Omidyar Network]], and reported in-house lobbying expenses of 1.51 million dollars in 2025. The [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]] has paid outside lobbyists every year since 2021, the [[Kyle House Group]] since 2023.[^12]
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### The Press
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By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied most of the funding of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which pays journalists placed at *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, [[Bloomberg]], *[[The Verge]]* and other newsrooms and publishes the newsletter *Transformer*; Coefficient's director of communications, [[Naina Bajekal]], was a former executive editor of *Time*.[^13] In September 2026 the publication *Effort*, founded by [[Brian Chau]], wrote that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets," that Open Philanthropy had pursued a "placement" strategy "to put their hand-picked employees in US and UK government offices," and that Moskovitz was the third-largest Democratic donor in 2020 and the second-largest in 2024.[^14]
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### Political Giving
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Moskovitz became one of the largest individual donors to Democratic causes, an explicit counterweight to right-wing megadonors. He and Tuna pledged roughly twenty million dollars to defeat [[Donald Trump]] and elect [[Hillary Clinton]] in 2016, and in 2020 he gave approximately ninety-two million dollars to the Democratic super PAC [[Future Forward]], among the largest single contributions of the cycle, followed by further giving to the same vehicle in 2024. The pattern is the inverse of Thiel's funding of Trump, [[JD Vance]], and the tech-right: two beneficiaries of the same company financing opposed political projects, while both poured money into the competing wings of the AI-risk debate.[^5][^6]
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In the 2024 cycle Moskovitz gave 38 million dollars to Future Forward, the main super PAC backing [[Kamala Harris]], plus 929,600 dollars to the Biden Victory Fund, ranking among Harris's largest billionaire donors. The 2016 effort was bipartisan in intent: Moskovitz wrote that his roughly twenty-million-dollar commitment was meant to counter what he saw as the danger of a Trump presidency, the first time he and Tuna had given at that scale to electoral politics. He has framed his political spending in the same expected-value terms as his philanthropy, treating elections as high-stakes interventions on the same metric of marginal impact that governs Open Philanthropy's grants.[^5][^7]
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On September 8, 2016, Moskovitz and Tuna announced 20 million dollars in contributions to defeat [[Donald Trump]] and elect [[Hillary Clinton]], calling Trump's promises to voters who felt left behind "quite possibly a deliberate con." They named 5 million dollars each to the [[LCV Victory Fund]] and [[For Our Future PAC]], and wrote that "we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections."[^15] [[Federal Election Commission]] records itemize contributions from Moskovitz of about 18.0 million dollars in the 2015-2016 cycle, led by 6 million to [[Priorities USA Action]], 4.5 million to the LCV Victory Fund, 2.5 million to For Our Future and 1.65 million to [[Color of Change PAC]]; 5.7 million in 2017-2018, including 3 million to [[MoveOn]] and 2 million to the [[Senate Majority PAC]]; 51.8 million in 2019-2020, including 46.89 million to the Democratic super PAC [[Future Forward]] and 830,600 dollars to the [[Biden Victory Fund]]; 5.9 million in 2021-2022, including 3.3 million to Future Forward and 1.9 million to its affiliate FFPA; and 50.9 million in 2023-2024, of which 50 million went to Future Forward in eight payments between August 28 and October 22, 2024, 30 million of it in October, and 929,600 dollars to the [[Harris Victory Fund]]. None had been itemized for the 2025-2026 cycle by September 2026.[^16] In March 2024 *[[Puck]]*'s [[Theodore Schleifer]] wrote that Moskovitz had spent "up to $100 million to defeat Donald Trump last cycle" and was "leaning into his power... and his checkbook" to beat back "the Andreessens and Musks of the world."[^17]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: "Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz Builds a Second Fortune With Asana," *Bloomberg,* October 1, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-01/facebook-co-founder-moskovitz-builds-a-second-fortune-with-asana
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[^2]: "How Dependent is the Effective Altruism Movement on Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna?" EA Forum, on Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures funding. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4BJSXH9ho4eYNT73P/how-dependent-is-the-effective-altruism-movement-on-dustin
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[^3]: "Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz announces retirement," *CNBC,* March 10, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/10/asana-ceo-dustin-moskovitz-announces-retirement-stock-price-drops-25percent.html
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[^4]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
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[^5]: "Clinton campaign and Dems get $20M from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz," *TechCrunch,* September 8, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/a-friend-of-hillary
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[^6]: "Future Forward PAC," InfluenceWatch, on the approximately ninety-two million dollar 2020 contribution and the 2024 giving. https://www.influencewatch.org/political-party/future-forward-pac/
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[^7]: "Trump, Harris' Top Billionaire Donors in 2024 Election," *Bloomberg,* and "Billionaires poured millions of dollars into presidential super PACs," *NBC News,* 2024, on the 38-million-dollar Future Forward gift and the 929,600-dollar Biden Victory Fund contribution. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-billionaire-donors-us-election/
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[^1]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
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[^2]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520, Form 990-PF data through fiscal year ending June 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
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[^3]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
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[^4]: "Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz Builds a Second Fortune With Asana," *Bloomberg,* October 1, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-01/facebook-co-founder-moskovitz-builds-a-second-fortune-with-asana
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[^5]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
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[^6]: ICONIQ Capital, LLC, and others, Schedule 13G regarding Diameter Credit Co, November 13, 2024. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1916099/000101143824000605/form_sc13g-diameter.htm
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[^7]: Open Philanthropy, "OpenAI, General Support," March 2017, archived January 1, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250101012608/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-support/
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[^8]: Open Philanthropy grant pages, archived 2025: "Georgetown University, Center for Security and Emerging Technology" (January 2019), http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035307/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/georgetown-university-center-for-security-and-emerging-technology/ ; "RAND Corporation, Emerging Technology Initiatives" (October 2023), http://web.archive.org/web/20250122041729/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-emerging-technology-initiatives/ ; "Center for AI Safety, General Support (2022)," http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035329/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/center-for-ai-safety-general-support/ ; Smith, "Coefficient Giving's CEO," on Redwood.
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[^9]: Muehlhauser, Luke. "Why I resigned from the Anthropic Board." June 12, 2024. https://lukemuehlhauser.com/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropic-board/
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[^10]: Schmad, Robert. "Documents show how a tech-connected nonprofit shaped Biden-era AI policy." *Washington Examiner,* April 17, 2026. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/4532389/
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[^11]: Center for AI Safety Action Fund, "2024 Annual Impact Report." https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66438c042d15b14b53b83006/68012dcfec6880aba24f528a_CAIS-ActionFund-ImpactReport_05.pdf
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[^12]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," https://ari.us/about-us/ ; U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings for clients "Americans for Responsible Innovation" and "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Americans+for+Responsible+Innovation
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[^13]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026, https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards ; Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
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[^14]: Effort. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media," September 2, 2026, https://www.effort.news/tarbell ; Effort. "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff," September 19, 2026. https://www.effort.news/aisi
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[^15]: Moskovitz, Dustin, and Cari Tuna. "Compelled to Act." *Medium,* September 8, 2016, archived December 31, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161231130245/https://medium.com/@moskov/compelled-to-act-1413930041ee
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[^16]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Moskovitz, Dustin," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Moskovitz%2C+Dustin
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[^17]: Schleifer, Theodore. "DustinBucks." *Puck,* March 20, 2024, archived January 10, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250110050826/https://puck.news/dustinbucks/
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