36 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Private Organization"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- OpenPhilanthropy
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- EffectiveAltruism
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- Longtermism
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- ArtificialIntelligence
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- DustinMoskovitz
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summary: "Open Philanthropy is the grantmaking organization funded by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna that became the durable financial backbone of effective altruism and AI-safety work, directing more than four billion dollars and serving as an early funder of Anthropic."
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location: "San Francisco, California"
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created: 2026-06-19
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updated: 2026-06-19
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---
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Open Philanthropy is a grantmaking organization, funded chiefly by [[Facebook]] and [[Asana]] cofounder [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and his wife [[Cari Tuna]], that became the durable financial backbone of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement and of [[Longtermism|longtermist]] and AI-safety work. Where the [[FTX Future Fund]] of [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] was the movement's flashiest and most short-lived funder, Open Philanthropy is its largest sustained one, directing more than four billion dollars in grants by 2025. It was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]], and its longtime co-chief executive [[Holden Karnofsky]] later moved into AI-safety work and is married to Anthropic president [[Daniela Amodei]].[^1][^2]
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### Origins
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The organization grew out of [[GiveWell]], the charity evaluator Karnofsky cofounded with [[Elie Hassenfeld]], and Good Ventures, the foundation Moskovitz and Tuna established in 2011. The two joined to form the Open Philanthropy Project in 2014, which began independent operations in 2017. Tuna, a former *Wall Street Journal* reporter, and Moskovitz, who made his fortune as one of the earliest Facebook employees and the cofounder of the software firm Asana, committed the bulk of their wealth to the effort.[^1][^3]
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The split from GiveWell separated two functions: GiveWell kept recommending a short list of proven global-health charities for ordinary donors, while Open Philanthropy took on the larger, riskier, harder-to-measure giving that Good Ventures' scale allowed. [[Alexander Berger]] rose to co-chief executive alongside Karnofsky and became sole chief executive when Karnofsky stepped back in 2023. Good Ventures supplies nearly all of Open Philanthropy's grant money, a dependence the organization acknowledged when, operating as Coefficient Giving, it began advising outside donors and directed more than 100 million dollars of non-Good-Ventures money in 2024.[^2][^5]
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### Funding Priorities and the AI Turn
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Open Philanthropy makes grants in two broad areas: global health and wellbeing, and longtermism, the latter encompassing potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, pandemic preparedness, and the far future. Its AI-risk funding flowed to the same research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] and the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] that the [[Rationalist Community]] built, making Open Philanthropy the principal institutional patron of AI-safety work outside the technology companies themselves. Karnofsky took a leave from his co-chief-executive role in 2023 and moved into a role focused on AI strategy. The organization renamed itself Coefficient Giving in 2025.[^2][^4]
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In 2017 Open Philanthropy made a 30-million-dollar grant to OpenAI that came with a board seat for Karnofsky, an early and unusual instance of a funder embedding itself inside an AI lab; it later became an early investor in Anthropic, where Karnofsky's wife Daniela Amodei is president. By June 2025 the organization had directed more than 4 billion dollars in cumulative grants. The November 2025 rename to Coefficient Giving, under chief executive Alexander Berger, marked a shift toward running multi-donor funds so other philanthropists could pool money into its cause areas, with the name chosen to signal a "coefficient" that multiplies the impact of partner giving. Its concentration of AI-safety money has drawn criticism that a single foundation funds much of the field that scrutinizes the AI labs to which it is financially tied.[^2][^4][^5]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: "How Effective is Effective Altruism? A Deep Dive Into Two of Open Philanthropy's EA-Inspired Programs," *Inside Philanthropy,* March 16, 2023. https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2023-3-16-how-effective-is-effective-altruism-a-deep-dive-into-two-of-open-philanthropys-ea-inspired-programs
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[^2]: "How Dependent is the Effective Altruism Movement on Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna?" EA Forum. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4BJSXH9ho4eYNT73P/how-dependent-is-the-effective-altruism-movement-on-dustin
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[^3]: "Giving in the Light of Reason," *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* on Good Ventures, GiveWell, and the Open Philanthropy partnership. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
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[^4]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder and the Karnofsky tie. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
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[^5]: "Open Philanthropy Becomes Coefficient Giving, Expanding Work With Multiple Donors," Coefficient Giving, November 2025, on the rename, Alexander Berger, the 4-billion-dollar grant total, and the multi-donor expansion; "OpenAI General Support," Good Ventures, on the March 2017 30-million-dollar grant and Karnofsky board seat. https://coefficientgiving.org/research/press-release-open-philanthropy-becomes-coefficient-giving-expanding-work-with-multiple-donors/
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