Perhaps my favorite part of my job is that I’m often exposed to mind-boggling accomplishments achieved by people within and around the EA community. Stories of impact remind us why our principles are valuable, inspire an openness to ambitious bets, and motivate altruism. Yet we can’t expect to hear about positive outcomes by default — the problems we solve are neglected, and beneficiaries are frequently voiceless (literally).
That’s why @Toby Tremlett🔹 and I would like to invite you to add stories of impact that have inspired you to the banner on the frontpage. They’ll be displayed all week, and the text will appear in the comments under this post. We endorse an expansive definition here: for example, feel free to celebrate your own work or that of your friends, and both smaller-scale and older wins are appreciated!
You could consider:
- What accomplishments seem important or underappreciated to you?
- What stories make you smile?
- What changed your mind about what’s possible?
- What work are you grateful for?
I’ll kick off the discussion by listing a few wins from 2025 that stood out to me, but don’t feel like you have to follow my approach. Our community is vast, and I can’t learn about every story — let me know what I missed.
- Over 2,800 companies have signed cage-free commitments to spare egg-laying hens from psychological suffering and physical trauma, affecting millions of hens. Additionally, 92% of corporate cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2024 or earlier have been fulfilled, up from 89% in 2024. These achievements are in large part due to persistent corporate campaigning efforts from organizations like The Humane League (THL).
- 10,000 people have now taken the Giving What We Can (GWWC) 10% pledge, making a commitment to give at least 10% of one’s income to highly impactful organizations. GWWC estimates that every pledge leads to $15,000 in counterfactual donations to high-impact charities. I’ve certainly donated more than I would have had I not taken a pledge!
- GiveWell announced its largest single grant ever of $96.3 million, given to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF). The grant will distribute over 17 million insecticide-treated nets in Chad, DRC, Nigeria, and Zambia, expected to cover nearly 4 million children and avert over 20 thousand deaths. AMF has prevented an estimated 270,000 deaths since its inception.
- California signed the first USA bill to directly regulate AI catastrophic risk into law, and New York followed suit. SB 53 requires large AI developers to publish safety frameworks, report critical incidents within 15 days, and establishes whistleblower protections.
- Slovenia banned cages for hens and piglet castration without anesthesia — a victory for 270,000 hens and potentially hundreds of thousands of piglets. This followed advocacy from the Animal Enterprise Transparency Project (AETP), supported by an EA Funds Animal Welfare Fund grant that provided much-needed capacity during the legislative push.
- Lewis Bollard’s appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast raised over $2M for effective animal welfare charities. This means that about 4 million animals were helped, according to Farmkind’s estimates.
- Speaking of successful media appearances, the first video from 80,000 Hours’s new YouTube channel about risks associated with AI amassed almost 10 million views in six months (here’s their retrospective). And The Daily Show featured two people working in EA cause areas: @Andres Jimenez Zorrilla 🔸 from Shrimp Welfare Project, and @Peter Wildeford from the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy.
- Finally, the EA community grew! At the time, EAG London ‘25 was the largest EA event ever, with almost 1,600 in attendance. Its reign was short-lived, however — EA Connect smashed its record, with 2,630 attendees.
For more, check out similar recaps from 2024, 2023, and 2022, as well as Lewis Bollard’s recent post on 2025 farmed animal welfare wins. I’m excited to hear what others have been inspired by!
Thanks to Tess Newton-Palmer, Fran Barclay, Toby Tremlett, and Catherine Low for their review, and to all those who kept me abreast of good news this past year.
Not necessarily the "biggest" win, but one that I didn't see coming and think is underrated is:
Malaysia’s Islamic Authority Declares Cultivated Meat Can Be Halal (First Muslim-Majority Country)
Important by itself, but even moreso under (AI-)accelerated alt-protein situations, where non-technological barriers to adoption (such as: is cultivated meat halal?) can pose as unnecessary barriers that can be addressed already.
Agree this is great. But I also wonder if there were any EA interventions that counterfactually led to this. If so, these efforts are probably worth replicating.
In 2025, a California court recognized Legal Impact for Chickens's power to sue an agriculture company for cruelty.
2025 saw developments in nonprofits’ ability to use civil litigation to stop illegal animal cruelty in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and California.
Most notably, in 2025, California courts clarified the power of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCAs) to enforce laws relating to animals. This should have a major effect on compliance with the state’s cruelty laws.
One of the relevant lawsuits, LIC v. Alexandre, was brought by the EA-aligned nonprofit I run, Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC). So, naturally, that's the case I want to highlight:
Legal Impact for Chickens v. Alexandre Family Farm, LLC, No. CV2401841, 2025 WL 1928044 (Cal.Super. May 30, 2025)
In LIC v. Alexandre, a California judge allowed a farmed-animal cruelty lawsuit to proceed in civil court. LIC, an SPCA, sued a dairy company for alleged cruelty (pouring salt in cows’ eyes, dragging downed cows, and starvation). The defendants asked the court to dismiss the case. The defendants argued that LIC has no power to enforce the cruelty law. Happily, California's Humboldt County Superior Court rejected the defendants' argument and allowed the case to proceed! The court held that LIC stated valid causes of action for injunctive and declaratory relief under California Corporations Code sections 10404 and 14502. Importantly, the court ruling means that an SPCA like LIC can directly sue agricultural companies for cruelty, with no special standing barriers.
The defendant dairy company sought appellate review via a petition for writ of mandate. The appellate court denied this writ, allowing the lower-court ruling to stand and case to proceed. ❤️
Cages for laying hens are now illegal in Germany!
This is thanks to the good work of Mahi Klosterhalfen and Albert Schweitzer Stiftung für unsere Mitwelt over many years!
Thanks for the info! I'm surprised that I'm only learning about it here.
Maybe premature to call this a win, but I think it's major that EA can still raise and promote new causes like risks from mirror biology.
As far as I know, this is because of great work from the (partially coefficient giving funded) Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund. They coordinated and published this article, and then oversaw a very successful media push.
Looking forward to seeing more work on this in 2026!
My read was that a major success was that they seem to have broad, initial agreement, even among previously bullish scientists, that we should be extremely cautious when developing the scaffolding of mirror bio, if at all. I think that is truly remarkable, borderline historic. This is agreement across national borders, scientific disciplines and the argument they put forward was not watertight - there was no definite proof that mirror bio would assuredly be catastrophic. So this consensus was built on plausible risk only. It was extremely well pulled off. It is what skeptics might easily and still do dismiss as "sci-fi".
The EU became the first major region or country globally to propose mandatory DNA synthesis screening! If the law is adopted, companies need to screen customers for orders of synthetic DNA of dangerous viruses, raising the barrier to the development of bioweapons and potentially setting a global standard for other countries.
https://health.ec.europa.eu/publications/proposal-regulation-establish-measures-strengthen-unions-biotechnology-and-biomanufacturing-sectors_en
Mieux Donner, France's new effective giving initiative, has now received over 1 million euros (1.172 million dollars) in donations, since its inception in 2024.
Humanely hatched eggs from in-ovo sexed hens launched in the United States!!!! https://www.wattagnet.com/egg/news/15749986/eggs-from-inovo-sexed-hens-are-now-available-in-the-us
The world’s largest insect farming company has officially gone bankrupt !
That seems very sad. Insect farming seems much lower suffering in-expectation.
Thanks for flagging this concern! I'd share it if insect farming had existed as a substitute for the factory farming of other animals. However, in practice, insect farming tries (and mostly fails) to substitute for:
Though I understand that we don't have the same views on insect suffering, I think that none of the three sources of food above cause much higher expected suffering than factory farm conditions for insects (again, I'd be much more uncertain if insect farming substituted for broiler chicken farming).
My current view on insects is that in the face of some indications of nociception / sentience-adjacent traits, these animals suffering significantly doesn't seem astronomically less likely than dogs or birds suffering. So to me, the pain of a trillion insects doesn't seem less in expectation that that of ten billion chickens or 500 million cows, though I have no confidence in more precise comparisons (so I'm not saying "obviously insect farming is worse than chicken farming").
Donations to Doneer Effectief grew with 40+% in 2025, to over €8 million! Made me smile when I saw the announcement post earlier this month :)
The UK's new Animal Welfare Strategy aims to phase out cages for chickens, farrowing crates, and CO2 gassing for pigs.
There's still more to do, but this is pretty encouraging.
Good.store showed the Profit for Good model works (100% of profits go to charity). They continued to grow, expanding from coffee, socks, and soap into tea, undies, and cleaning products. The big milestone in 2025: they opened the maternal health center in Sierra Leone.
I bring it up because I think anyone who cares about being compassionate and effective (you 😇) should consider voting for maternal health in Africa over contributing to the profits of large international conglomerates.
Exciting! I hope we'll hear the same from AIM - Incubated Founding to Give initiatives in the coming years!
Healthy Futures Global
by Keyur & Nils from Charity Entrepreneurship
Crazy how some randos from the otherside of the world convinced an Australian doctor and a German consultant who don't know each other to ditch their jobs and instead prevent Syphilis transmission to newborns, reduce stillbirths, and lower newborn death in a foreign country.
Then in just 3 years they did the following:
- Get enough Rapid Syphilis/HIV dual tests to cover over 1/3 of all pregnant women in the 13th most populous country
- Make such tests 2-3x cheaper
- Expand to Angola
I'm grateful for Keyur & Nils for making a risky jump in their career then working like hell to improve the lives of my people now and the million others to come. I'm grateful for the brilliant people at CE for finding cause areas like these by also researching like hell and putting together an effective team to tackle it. You all made this possible now. Insane stuff.
Mind boggling details below from their newsletter:
Philippines
Supply
Empower
Train
Angola
Meat consumption in the EU is reported to be declining! (La UE prevé menos consumo de vacuno y porcino y más pollo).
There is a problem in that chicken consumption is expected to slightly increase, which may increase overall farmed animal populations due to the small body problem. However, I believe this is overall good news because it shows that peak meat is attainable and that citizens are capable of slowly shifting their diets. I'm hoping to see more news like this in other regions in the next few years.
So I was procrastinating publishing on our Summit Retrospective, and then I saw this article.
The event was so amazing, and though I can, y'know be rational about it, seeing this post gives me a little fire to put it out there sooner!
We have seen an order-of-magnitude increase in the interest in AI alignment, according to Google Trends. Part of it (July peak) can be attributed to Grok's behavior (see my little analysis). The YouTube channel AI in Context correctly identified this opportunity and swiftly released a viral video explaining how the incident connects to alignment. September peak might be attributed to the release of If Anyone Builds It.