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category aliases tags summary location start relations created updated
Private Organization
Coefficient Giving
Open Philanthropy Project
GiveWell Labs
Organization
OpenPhilanthropy
EffectiveAltruism
Longtermism
ArtificialIntelligence
DustinMoskovitz
Grantmaker of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, renamed Coefficient Giving in 2025, which has given away about 7 billion dollars and funded CSET, RAND's AI work, Horizon fellows and Tarbell journalists. San Francisco, California 2011
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funded Effective Altruism Foundation 1,000,000 dollars over two years, research and general operations, July 2019 2019-07 25
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founded Dustin Moskovitz true 2011 1
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founded Cari Tuna true 2011 1
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head_of Holden Karnofsky true chief executive; co-chief executive from June 2021; director of AI strategy from July 2023 until April 2024 2023-07 6
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head_of Alexander Berger true co-chief executive from June 2021; sole chief executive from July 2023 2021-06 12
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funded OpenAI 2017-03 30 million dollars, with a board seat for Karnofsky 5
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funded RAND Corporation 2023-04 5.5 million and 10.5 million dollars at Matheny's discretion 8
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funded Center for AI Safety 2022-11 5.16 million dollars in 2022, then 4.03 million and 1.43 million, and a 1.87-million-dollar exit grant in October 2023 2023-10 9
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funded Redwood Research 2025-11 36 million dollars 1
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funded Redwood Research 2021-11 four grants totaling 9.42 million dollars; grant investigator Nick Beckstead 20
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funded Redwood Research 2022-08 10.7 million dollars over 18 months 20
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funded Redwood Research 2023-06 5.3 million dollars 20
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funded Redwood Research 2025-05 1.1 million dollars for research collaborations 20
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funded Alignment Research Center 2022-03 1,515,000 dollars in 2022 21
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employed_by Claire Zabel true 2015-08 research analyst from August 2015, later program officer, head of effective altruism grantmaking and program director 16
2026-06-19 2026-10-08

Open Philanthropy is a grantmaking organization funded chiefly by Facebook and Asana cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, whose founders and many early employees, according to Semafor, "were sympathetic to the utilitarian philosophical movement known as Effective Altruism." Known earlier as GiveWell Labs, it was launched in 2011, and the couple's fortune has contributed most of the roughly 7 billion dollars it had given away by September 2026. It renamed itself Coefficient Giving in November 2025. Its chief executive since 2023, Alexander Berger, said in 2026 that it had spent about a tenth of the Gates Foundation's budget in 2025 and more than twice that so far in 2026; Semafor reported it was on track to give away 2 billion dollars in the year and called it "a favorite of Anthropic executives."12

Origins

The organization grew out of GiveWell, the charity evaluator Holden 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 is a former The Wall Street Journal reporter.34 Good Ventures supplies nearly all of its grant money; as Coefficient Giving it began advising outside donors, and it directed more than 100 million dollars of other donors' money in 2024.2

AI Grantmaking

In March 2017 Open Philanthropy recommended 30 million dollars over three years to OpenAI, under which Karnofsky joined OpenAI's board to oversee, "jointly with one other Board member," its safety and governance work. The grant page disclosed that the OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano were technical advisers to Open Philanthropy and lived in the same house as Karnofsky, who was engaged to Amodei's sister Daniela Amodei.5 In 2016 Sam Altman had led a 50-million-dollar investment in Asana, and Adam D'Angelo sat on the boards of both Asana and OpenAI.6 Moskovitz personally took part in the 124-million-dollar 2021 investment round of Anthropic. The Open Philanthropy program officer Luke Muehlhauser was one of Anthropic's four board members in 2023, and Karnofsky, Open Philanthropy's former chief executive and in 2023 its director of AI strategy, is married to Anthropic's president, Daniela Amodei. Moskovitz told Politico that any returns from his Anthropic investment "will be entirely redirected back into our philanthropic work."6 In 2026 Berger said: "We're definitely not the Anthropic Foundation."1

Muehlhauser was the grant investigator on the 55-million-dollar grant of January 2019 that launched the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University under the former IARPA director Jason Matheny; Open Philanthropy was CSET's "main funder" and raised its commitment to more than 100 million dollars through 2025.7 After Matheny became chief executive of the RAND Corporation, Open Philanthropy gave RAND 5.5 million dollars in April 2023 and 10.5 million in October 2023 "to be spent at the discretion of RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny."8 It gave 5.16 million dollars to the Center for AI Safety in November 2022; the center organized the May 2023 statement that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority."69 In November 2025 it gave 36 million dollars to Redwood Research, which OpenAI brought in to analyze an AI-agent attack on Hugging Face in July 2026.1

Congress and the Press

In 2022 Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars for what became the first cohort of the Horizon Institute for Public Service, which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks; the Politico reporter Brendan Bordelon wrote in October 2023 that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon. A spokesperson, Mike Levine, said Open Philanthropy "did not play an active role in screening, training, or placement of fellows" and that "the idea that we, our funders, or our grantees are motivated by pecuniary interests is misguided."6 By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied the majority of the funding of the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, which places paid fellows in newsrooms and publishes the newsletter Transformer.10 In December 2025 Semafor reported that Open Philanthropy had been "bothered by media coverage of it, in particular a series of critical stories from Politico," and had hired political communications staff; its director of communications, Naina Bajekal, was a former executive editor of Time, which had hosted four Tarbell fellows.11

Leadership

Karnofsky led Open Philanthropy as chief executive until June 16, 2021, when he announced that the cofounder Alexander Berger had been "promoted to co-CEO" in "a dual-CEO structure, with both of us reporting directly to the board," Karnofsky keeping biosecurity and AI risk and Berger taking the portfolio renamed "Global Health and Wellbeing."12 On July 27, 2023, Karnofsky announced "on behalf of Open Philanthropy's board" that Berger was sole chief executive and that his own title was changing to director of AI strategy; Tuna, styled in the announcement as president, said that "Dustin and I have worked closely with Alexander for many years," and Berger recalled the time "when Holden, Cari, Dustin and I were starting to think about it together."13 Karnofsky left the staff on April 29, 2024, for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing that the organization "would benefit from less ambiguity about my role in its funding decisions (especially given the fact that I'm married to the President of a major AI company)," and that he would remain on its board "at least for the time being."14 The same officers ran the Open Philanthropy Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) whose returns list Karnofsky and Berger as co-CEOs for 2021 and 2022 and "co-CEO thru 7/23/23" for 2023.15

Claire Zabel joined Open Philanthropy as a research analyst in August 2015. The organization's team page described her as program officer for global catastrophic risks in November 2018 and, from December 2019 to at least January 2022, as leading its grantmaking on effective altruism; by June 2024 she was a program director who oversaw the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team and had led the Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building team.16 The Coefficient Giving team biography gives her current title as managing director of the Short Timelines Special Projects team and states that she ran the Capacity Building team from 2018 to 2024 and oversaw the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team in 2018 and 2019 and again in 2023 and 2024.17 Her name appears as grant investigator on grant pages dated May 2018 to March 2022 that total about 12.6 million dollars, among them 5,000,000 dollars to the Atlas Fellowship in March 2022 and 1,904,942 dollars to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in November 2018.18

Redwood Research

Redwood Research, a Berkeley AI-alignment nonprofit, announced in October 2021 that its board was Nate Thomas, Paul Christiano and Karnofsky; its returns list Karnofsky as treasurer for 2021 and treasurer and CFO for 2022, and as a director until November 2023.19 Open Philanthropy recommended four grants totaling 9.42 million dollars to Redwood in November 2021, with Nick Beckstead as grant investigator, then 10.7 million dollars in August 2022, 5.3 million in June 2023 and 1.1 million in May 2025, before the 36 million dollars of November 2025, a total of 62.52 million dollars. None of the four archived grant pages mentions Karnofsky's or Christiano's board seats. Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for AI risk, Ajeya Cotra, was a Redwood director on its return for 2023 and until August 2024.1920

ARC and Canary

Open Philanthropy gave the Alignment Research Center, founded by Paul Christiano, 265,000 dollars for general support in March 2022 and 1,250,000 dollars over two years in November 2022. The center incubated ARC Evals, which spun off in December 2023 as METR.212223 In September 2025 Open Philanthropy gave the RAND Corporation 10 million dollars over three years for Canary, "a collaboration between RAND and METR to develop advanced methods for evaluating AI systems," on the recommendation of Trevor Levin of its AI governance and policy team.24

Effective Altruism Foundation

Open Philanthropy's grant pages record five grants to the Effective Altruism Foundation (EAF). In July 2019 it recommended 1,000,000 dollars over two years "to support some aspects of its research and general operations," with Nick Beckstead and Claire Zabel as grant investigators. The page states that "we have felt ambivalent about EAF's work to date (despite feeling unambiguously positively about some of their projects)" and that "A major purpose of this grant is to encourage and support EAF and our other grantees in the space in taking approaches to longtermism with greater emphasis on shared objectives between different value systems."25

Four later grants were recorded: 15,358 dollars in April 2020 (investigators Zachary Robinson and Alexander Berger), 375,000 dollars in October 2020 (investigator Robinson), 697,268 dollars in January 2022, all for research and advocacy on policy interventions in Europe in the field of development aid, and 200,000 dollars in April 2022 for work in biosecurity.26

Simon Knutsson wrote in 2019 that he sent Open Philanthropy questions on October 31 and November 5 about whether the 2019 grant was conditioned on guidelines written by EAF, and that its communications officer replied on November 5 and 8 that the organization had nothing to add beyond the grant page.27

On Open Philanthropy's share of effective altruism funding, two compilations give different figures for 2019. Benjamin Todd of 80,000 Hours estimated in 2021 that effective altruism funding in 2019 was about 416 million dollars per year, of which about 260 million dollars came from Open Philanthropy (an average of its 2017 to 2019 grants taken from its grants database), 80 million dollars for GiveWell-recommended charities excluding Open Philanthropy was added to global health, and 30 million dollars per year was a guess for other longtermist and meta donations; he described all the figures as extremely rough. The ratio of 260 to 416 is 62.5 percent. A spreadsheet of grants compiled by a forum user and last updated November 7, 2023 lists Open Philanthropy at 196.6 million dollars of 306.1 million dollars in 2019, a share of 64.2 percent, and 236.9 million dollars of 407.5 million dollars in 2020, with the Survival and Flourishing Fund at 1.8 million dollars in 2019 and 5.4 million dollars in 2020. Its Open Philanthropy column sums to about 1.99 billion dollars for 2012 through 2022.2829

Footnotes

  1. 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 ↩︎

  2. "Open Philanthropy Becomes Coefficient Giving, Expanding Work With Multiple Donors," Coefficient Giving, November 2025. https://coefficientgiving.org/research/press-release-open-philanthropy-becomes-coefficient-giving-expanding-work-with-multiple-donors/ ↩︎

  3. "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 ↩︎

  4. "Giving in the Light of Reason," Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason ↩︎

  5. Open Philanthropy, "OpenAI, General Support," grant of March 2017, archived January 1, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250101012608/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-support/ ↩︎

  6. 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 ↩︎

  7. Open Philanthropy, "Georgetown University, Center for Security and Emerging Technology," grant of January 2019, archived January 2, 2025, http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035307/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/georgetown-university-center-for-security-and-emerging-technology/ ; Center for Security and Emerging Technology, "New Grant Agreement Boosts CSET Funding to More than $100 Million Through 2025," August 25, 2021. https://cset.georgetown.edu/article/new-grant-agreement-boosts-cset-funding-to-more-than-100-million-over-five-years/ ↩︎

  8. Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, Emerging Technology Initiatives," gift of October 2023, with the related April 2023 gift, archived January 22, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250122041729/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-emerging-technology-initiatives/ ↩︎

  9. Open Philanthropy, "Center for AI Safety, General Support (2022)," grant of November 2022, archived January 2, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035329/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/center-for-ai-safety-general-support/ ↩︎

  10. Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards ↩︎

  11. 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 ↩︎

  12. Karnofsky, Holden. "Open Philanthropy's New Co-CEO." Open Philanthropy blog, June 16, 2021, archived May 31, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220531031049/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/open-philanthropys-new-co-ceo ↩︎

  13. Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, archived March 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/ ↩︎

  14. Karnofsky, Holden. "Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." EA Forum, April 29, 2024. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace ↩︎

  15. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663 ↩︎

  16. Open Philanthropy, "Claire Zabel," team biography, Wayback Machine captures of November 28, 2018, December 12, 2019, January 19, 2022 and June 17, 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240617074758/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/claire-zabel/ ↩︎

  17. Coefficient Giving, "Claire Zabel," team biography, viewed October 8, 2026. https://coefficientgiving.org/team/claire-zabel/ ↩︎

  18. Open Philanthropy grant pages naming Claire Zabel as grant investigator (twenty pages, listed in the footnotes of the Claire Zabel page). https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/atlas-fellowship-scholarships-and-summer-program-for-students/ and https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/nuclear-threat-initiative-projects-to-reduce-global-catastrophic-biological-risks/ ↩︎

  19. Thomas, Nate. "We're Redwood Research, we do applied alignment research, AMA." LessWrong, October 6, 2021, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHvHvBR8L6oycnMXe/we-re-redwood-research-we-do-applied-alignment-research-ama ; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Redwood Research Group Inc," EIN 87-1702255, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2021 to 2024, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/871702255 ; Open Philanthropy, "Ajeya Cotra," team biography, archived November 11, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231111135945/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/ajeya-cotra/ ↩︎

  20. Open Philanthropy grant pages, archived: "Redwood Research, General Support," November 2021, http://web.archive.org/web/20220811081927/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2022)," http://web.archive.org/web/20221106183007/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2023)," http://web.archive.org/web/20230912095528/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/ ; "Redwood Research, AI Safety Research Collaborations," May 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250810094119/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-ai-safety-research-collaborations/ ↩︎

  21. Open Philanthropy, "Alignment Research Center, General Support," March 2022, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20220816132918id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support/ ↩︎

  22. Open Philanthropy, "Alignment Research Center, General Support (November 2022)," archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20230512114157id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support-november-2022/ ↩︎

  23. METR, "ARC Evals is now METR," December 4, 2023. https://metr.org/blog/2023-12-04-metr-announcement/ ↩︎

  24. Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, AI Evaluation and Testing," September 2025, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251025225511id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-ai-evaluation-and-testing/ ↩︎

  25. Open Philanthropy, "Effective Altruism Foundation: Research and Operations," grant page, award date July 2019, grant investigators Nick Beckstead and Claire Zabel. Archived 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/2022id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/effective-altruism-foundation-research-and-operations/ ↩︎

  26. Open Philanthropy grant pages for the Effective Altruism Foundation: April 2020, 15,358 dollars; October 2020, 375,000 dollars; January 2022, 697,268 dollars; April 2022, 200,000 dollars (Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness). Archived 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/2022id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/effective-altruism-foundation-european-policy-research/ , https://web.archive.org/web/2022id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/effective-altruism-foundation-european-policy-research-and-advocacy/ , https://web.archive.org/web/2022id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/effective-altruism-foundation-european-policy-research-and-advocacy-2022/ , https://web.archive.org/web/2022id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/effective-altruism-foundation-european-policy-research-and-advocacy-2022-2/ ↩︎

  27. Simon Knutsson, "E-mail exchange with the Open Philanthropy Project," simonknutsson.com, November 10, 2019. https://www.simonknutsson.com/e-mail-exchange-with-the-open-philanthropy-project Sole source; Knutsson did not publish the replies. ↩︎

  28. Benjamin Todd, "How are resources in effective altruism allocated across issues?," 80,000 Hours, August 9, 2021, section on 2019 funding by cause area. https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/ ↩︎

  29. "Historical EA funding data," spreadsheet linked from the Effective Altruism Forum post of that title, last updated November 7, 2023; columns OPP, GW, EAF (which in this sheet denotes the EA Funds, not the Effective Altruism Foundation), ACE, SFF, FTX, annual totals 2012 to 2023 (estimate). https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZbaDmowkXbTBsxvHn/historical-ea-funding-data Percentages and the 2012 to 2022 sum computed from the sheet's dollar figures. ↩︎