92 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Private Organization"
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aliases:
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- "Coefficient Giving"
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- "Open Philanthropy Project"
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- "GiveWell Labs"
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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: "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."
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location: "San Francisco, California"
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start: 2011
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relations:
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- type: founded
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with: "[[Dustin Moskovitz]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 2011
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fn: 1
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- type: founded
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with: "[[Cari Tuna]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 2011
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fn: 1
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- type: head_of
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with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
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reverse: true
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role: "chief executive"
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fn: 6
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- type: head_of
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with: "[[Alexander Berger]]"
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reverse: true
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role: "chief executive"
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start: 2023
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fn: 1
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- type: funded
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with: "[[OpenAI]]"
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start: 2017-03
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role: "30 million dollars, with a board seat for Karnofsky"
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fn: 5
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- type: funded
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with: "[[RAND Corporation]]"
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start: 2023-04
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role: "5.5 million and 10.5 million dollars at Matheny's discretion"
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fn: 8
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- type: funded
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with: "[[Center for AI Safety]]"
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start: 2022-11
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role: "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"
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end: 2023-10
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fn: 9
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- type: funded
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with: "[[Redwood Research]]"
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start: 2025-11
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role: "36 million dollars"
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fn: 1
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created: 2026-06-19
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updated: 2026-09-23
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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]], whose founders and many early employees, according to *[[Semafor]]*, "were sympathetic to the utilitarian philosophical movement known as [[Effective Altruism|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."[^1][^2]
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### Origins
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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|Wall Street Journal]]* reporter.[^3][^4] 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]
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### AI Grantmaking
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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|Daniela]].[^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]
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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."[^6][^9] 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]
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### Congress and the Press
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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]
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### Footnotes
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[^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
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[^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/
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[^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
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[^4]: "Giving in the Light of Reason," *Stanford Social Innovation Review.* https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
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[^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/
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[^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
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[^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/
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[^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/
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[^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/
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[^10]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
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[^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
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