There are maybe 30 to 60 people in the world doing AI safety grantmaking, collectively directing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Soon, there will be >$1B being directed per year, and potentially multiple billions.

I like this framing for the botecs it encourages!

Currently it seems like each grantmaker is (on average) responsible for ~$10m/y. One question I think about sometimes: how will # of grantmakers scale as more $ go towards AI safety funding? If funding is eg 3x'ing year-over-year, it's unclear whether we're currently training up that number of grantmakers.

Another question might be: what is a good ratio of # of grantmakers to # of direct work? I'd ballpark there to be ~1000 fulltime AIS direct workers; does a 20:1 ratio seem high, low, or just right?

I'd be curious to look at comparisons for scaled funding ecosystems for a reference class; I'm primarily thinking VCs & angels, but perhaps others eg academic funding are also appropriate.

It's a separate event run by CEA, which, in contrast to EAG, is much smaller and just for leaders in the field of xrisk. (I haven't been, but my wife attended this 2026 edition)

See also https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WLZabqQGCd2joZpxR/summit-on-existential-security-2023

I'm hiring for a variety of roles, which are  mostly operational/community-shaped:

• Manifest, Lead Organizer
• Mox, Head of Community
• Mox, Head of Event Development

Hm, as a "helpful" react-er, I was trying to communicate both "thanks for engaging" and "I have seen this"; I recognize that it's hard for org leaders to weigh in on things in detail, so I simultaneously appreciate Zach saying anything at all, and wish he or someone else could elaborate (as, I suppose, I and Oli replied with at the time below).

Mostly I wasn't thinking that much about norms for reacts, idk

Thanks for the post! It seems like CEA and EA Funds are the only entities left housed under EV (per the EV website); if that's the case, why bother spinning out at all?

To be clear, "10 new OpenPhils" is trying to convey like, a gestalt or a vibe; how I expect the feeling of working within EA causes to change, rather than a rigorous point estimate

Though, I'd be willing to bet at even odds, something like "yearly EA giving exceeds $10B by end of 2031", which is about 10x the largest year per https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NWHb4nsnXRxDDFGLy/historical-ea-funding-data-2025-update.

Some factors that could raise giving estimates:

• The 3:1 match
• If "6%" is more like "15%"
• Future growth of Anthropic stock
• Differing priorities and timelines (ie focus on TAI) among Ants

Also, the Anthropic situation seems like it'll be different than Dustin in that the number of individual donors ("principals") goes up a lot - which I'm guessing leads to more grants at smaller sizes, rather than OpenPhil's (relatively) few, giant grants 

Appreciate the shoutout! Some thoughts:

• Anthropic's been lately valued at $350b; if we estimate that eg 6% of that is in the form of equity allocated to employees, that's $21B between the ~3000 they currently have, or an average of $7m/employee.
  • I think 6% is somewhat conservative and wouldn't be surprised if it were more like 12-20%
• Early employees have much (OOMs) more equity than new hires. Here's one estimated generated by Claude and I:

  • 

  • Even after discounting for standard vesting terms (4 years), % of EAs, and % allocated to charity, that's still mindboggling amounts of money. I'd guess that this is more like "10 new OpenPhils in the next 2-6 years"
• I heard about the IPO rumors at the same time as everyone else (ie very recently), but for the last 6 months or so, the expectation was that Anthropic might have a ~yearly liquidity event, where Anthropic or some other buyer buys back employee stock up to some cap ($2m was thrown around as a figure)
• As reported in other places, early Anthropic employees were offered a 3:1 match of donations of equity, iirc up to 50% of their total stock grant? New employees now are offered 1:1 match, but the 3:1 holds for the early ones (though not cofounders)

Thanks for writing this - I'm a pro-life EA, which feels like being a member of a rare species, and so I appreciated you posting this here. I thought the diagrams were an especially nice touch! 

For the $1m estimate, I think the figures were intended to include estimated opportunity cost foregone (eg when self-funding), and Marcus ballparked it at $100k/y * 10 years? But this is obviously a tricky calculation.

tbh, I would have assumed that the $300k through LTFF was not your primary source of funding -- it's awesome that you've produced your videos on relatively low budgets! (and maybe we should work on getting you more funding, haha)