A.I.’s biggest power players are not waiting for governments to decide how the technology’s risks and rewards should be managed. Through their philanthropy, the same founders and investors accelerating the industry are spending billions to shape its social impact, from preventing catastrophic failures and cushioning economic disruption to expanding access to A.I.-driven advances in science, health and education.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Skype co-founder and A.I. safety advocate Jaan Tallinn, for example, fund research into whether advanced systems could threaten humanity. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are investing in A.I.-powered disease research, while Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori, are donating computing capacity to scientists and universities. The Gates Foundation and Anthropic, meanwhile, have committed $200 million to programs using Claude to screen vaccine candidates and support health workers and farmers, particularly in lower-income countries.
Their philanthropy also reaches beyond A.I., supporting pandemic preparedness, ocean exploration, economic mobility and vaccine development. Many have signed the Giving Pledge, committing at least half their fortunes to charity.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO and startup investor
Philanthropic vehicle: OpenResearch
Background: Altman’s philanthropy has long focused on the question: What happens to ordinary people if A.I. rewrites the economy? In 2015, while leading startup accelerator Y Combinator, he personally pledged $10 million to launch the research lab that became OpenResearch. Nearly a decade later, Altman and his husband, Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin, signed the Giving Pledge. Their brief pledge letter said they intend to support technology that “helps create abundance for people.”
Altman’s fortune, estimated in the billions, comes largely from hundreds of startup investments rather than equity in OpenAI. That portfolio includes bets on fusion energy, biotechnology and other technologies premised on producing more energy, longer lives and, in Silicon Valley’s favorite word, abundance.
What he funds: Altman’s most visible philanthropic project is OpenResearch’s landmark study of unconditional cash. With initial results released in 2024, the $60 million experiment has been dubbed “the most comprehensive study” on universal basic income. Over three years, it followed 3,000 lower-income participants in Texas and Illinois, with roughly one-third receiving $1,000 a month, while the remainder received $50. Altman helped raise the funding and contributed $14 million himself.
Researchers found that recipients used much of the money for essentials and gained more freedom to make decisions around work and housing. However, cash alone did not resolve deeper problems, such as chronic illness or unaffordable housing, they found. As OpenResearch put it, cash “gives people increased agency to decide how to prioritize their needs,” though it remains only “one piece of the puzzle” in facing deeper barriers.
More recently, Altman has cooled on the conventional universal basic income. During an April interview with The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, he said he no longer believes in universal basic income as strongly as he once did, arguing that fixed cash payments could be insufficient as A.I. changes the labor market. Instead, he has floated ideas such as “universal basic compute.” On a May 2024 episode of the All-In podcast, Altman described it as a future in which “everybody gets a slice of GPT-7’s compute” that they could use, resell or “donate it to somebody to use for cancer research.”
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and A.I. investor
Philanthropic vehicle: The Aphorism Foundation
Background: Hoffman is best known as LinkedIn’s co-founder, a prolific tech investor and a major donor to the Democratic Party. Less visibly, he also oversees the $1 billion Aphorism Foundation. He and his wife, educator Michelle Yee, also signed the Giving Pledge in 2018, describing philanthropy as a way to help people “realize their best selves.”
Aphorism has no website, accepts no applications and relies largely on referrals from Hoffman’s network. Rather than setting rigid budgets for causes, Hoffman looks for founders pursuing bold ideas in science, economic opportunity, democracy, human rights and A.I. “Maybe it won’t surprise people that the co-founder of LinkedIn has a network mindset,” he said in a 2024 interview with Inside Philanthropy.
What they fund: In 2017, Hoffman contributed $10 million to launch the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, joining eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and several foundations in backing research on bias, accountability and public-interest development of A.I.
More recently, Hoffman has turned to another tech-era concern: the collapse of trust in institutions. In April, his $10 million Trust in American Institutions Challenge awarded $9 million to CalMatters, a nonprofit newsroom focused on California, to expand Digital Democracy beyond the state. The A.I. platform analyzes legislative votes and campaign donations, giving journalists and voters a clearer view of state government. The project reflects Hoffman’s belief that technology can help rebuild trust through better public services and more accountable institutions. “Hey, this institution that’s somewhat broken, let’s fix it, not let’s wrecking ball it,” he told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2025.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia co-founder and CEO
Philanthropic vehicle: The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation
Background: Jensen and his wife, Lori Huang, launched their family foundation in 2007 with 370,000 Nvidia shares, then worth about $12.6 million. The couple met as engineering students at Oregon State University, which has since become one of the foundation’s biggest beneficiaries.
As Nvidia’s stock has soared over the past three years, the foundation has grown into one of the largest private giving vehicles in tech. According to its most recent Form 990 filing, the foundation held $9.1 billion in net assets as of the end of 2024. Despite its scale, the Huangs’ foundation has no public website and offers little public information beyond its tax filings.
What they fund: The foundation reported $126 million in grants in 2024, including $30.5 million to Oregon State University, $10.8 million to Crisis Text Line and $1.7 million to Mental Health Innovations. About $82 million, or roughly two-thirds of its grantmaking that year, went to Schwab Charitable, a donor-advised fund whose public filings do not reveal where the Huangs’ money ultimately goes.
More recently, the Huangs have been donating computing power, the resource at the center of the A.I. boom. They have purchased capacity from CoreWeave, an Nvidia cloud partner that counts the chipmaker as a major investor, and donated it to universities and nonprofits for scientific and A.I. research. As of mid-May, those donations were valued at $108.3 million.
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana
Philanthropic vehicles: Good Ventures and Coefficient Giving
Background: Moskovitz has spent much of his post-Facebook fortune through a philanthropic partnership with his wife, Cari Tuna, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has become a driving force behind their giving. In 2010, while still in their 20s, the couple became the youngest signatories of the Giving Pledge.
A year later, Moskovitz and Tuna launched Good Ventures, their private foundation, but chose not to build a traditional grantmaking operation around it. Instead, they partnered with the charity evaluator GiveWell on a research project to identify overlooked giving opportunities with unusually high potential impact. That project became Open Philanthropy in 2014, separated from GiveWell three years later and rebranded as Coefficient Giving in 2025.
Good Ventures holds and distributes the couple’s charitable wealth, while Coefficient researches and recommends grants. As of November, Good Ventures held about $10 billion in assets, while Moskovitz and Tuna have given away more than $5 billion.
What they fund: Their giving spans global health, scientific research, pandemic preparedness and farm animal welfare. In May, Coefficient launched a $200 million fund to develop vaccines against Group A strep, with more than $140 million committed at launch. Coefficient also began funding A.I. safety in 2015, years before ChatGPT brought the idea into the mainstream. Tuna told Stanford earlier this year that while companies have strong incentives to make A.I. powerful, “there aren’t comparable incentives to ensure these systems are deployed and integrated safely.” This month, Coefficient committed up to $160 million to Resolution, a new nonprofit researching how to align A.I. systems with human interests, marking its biggest technical A.I. safety grant to date.
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and A.I. investor
Philanthropic vehicles: The Schmidt Family Foundation, Schmidt Futures and Schmidt Sciences
Background: Schmidt launched the Schmidt Family Foundation with his wife, Wendy Schmidt, in 2006, during his decade-long run as Google CEO. He has since become an influential voice on A.I., national security and emerging tech, while Wendy, a former journalist and Silicon Valley marketing executive, has led much of the family philanthropy.
Their giving has since grown into a sprawling network. In 2009, the couple created the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which gives scientists access to advanced research vessels. In 2017, they launched Schmidt Futures to back talent and ideas across science, technology and society. In 2024, they created Schmidt Sciences, bringing much of their science-focused giving under a single roof.
What they fund: The Schmidts’ AI2050 initiative, named for how A.I. will transform the world by midcentury, supports fellows working on A.I. research considered “typically hard to fund but socially beneficial,” according to its website. In 2025, Schmidt Sciences also launched a $10 million A.I.-safety program offering researchers computing resources and up to $500,000 each.
Their philanthropy extends well beyond A.I. Schmidt Sciences, which is now backing plans for a privately funded space telescope and three ground-based observatories, while Schmidt Ocean Institute gives researchers access to Falkor (too), a high-tech vessel used to explore largely uncharted parts of the ocean. Through Schmidt Futures, the couple has also funded programs like Rise, which supports young leaders worldwide, and the Alliance for the American Dream, a multi-city effort to improve economic mobility in the U.S.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta
Philanthropic vehicle: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)
Background: Zuckerberg launched CZI with his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2015 after the birth of their first daughter, Maxima. Zuckerberg and Chan pledged to donate 99 percent of their Meta shares over their lifetimes. Worth about $45 billion then, those holdings are now valued at more than $200 billion.
CZI initially cast a wide net, committing billions to causes ranging from education to housing to immigration reform. A decade later, Zuckerberg and Chan narrowed CZI’s focus, going “all in on A.I.-powered biology” through Biohub, its network of disease-research centers.
What they fund: Chan, a pediatrician, brings a medical perspective to the undertaking. Biohub now brings together more than 150 scientists and staff across the U.S. to tackle A.I. projects conventional labs might struggle to pursue alone, from mapping the body’s cell types to building a virtual model of the immune system.
CZI has also set aside $600 million for advanced imaging and $20 million to test personalized CRISPR treatments for children with rare immune disorders. By 2028, CZI said it plans to grow its A.I. computing capacity tenfold, reaching 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs). Through 2035, the organization plans to spend at least $10 billion on basic science, more than doubling the $4 billion it spent in its first 10 years.
Jaan Tallinn, Skype co-founder and A.I. investor
Philanthropic vehicles: The Survival and Flourishing Fund, Future of Life Institute and Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
Background: Tallinn made his fortune helping build Skype and Kazaa, then turned much of his attention to the possible risks of the next technological rupture. The Estonian programmer helped launch the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in 2012 and the Future of Life Institute in 2014, both focused on threats that could endanger humanity’s long-term future.
Tallinn has also backed the companies building the technology he worries about. He was an early investor in DeepMind and led Anthropic’s $124 million funding round in 2021, placing him in the unusual position of funding both A.I. labs and the groups pushing for stronger safeguards. On his personal philanthropy website, Tallinn describes his overarching goal as reducing “humanity’s risk of destroying itself with A.I. over the next decade or two.”
What he funds: For a tech billionaire, Tallinn has made his giving unusually visible. In 2024, he reported funding $51 million in direct grants, above the $42 million target in his five-year giving pledge, and committed at least another $10 million to the Survival and Flourishing Fund’s 2025 grant round.
That fund has directed more than $150 million to over 300 projects focused on humanity’s long-term survival, including METR, which evaluates whether A.I. models can complete real-world tasks, and Epoch AI, which tracks advanced A.I. systems over time. Tallinn has also funded advocacy groups, including the Center for AI Safety Action Fund, that are working to make A.I. risk a bigger public issue.
