I'm thinking of AI-thesis hedge funds like VARA and SALP, but they are difficult to get access to without being very wealthy. My understanding is @Austin is considering setting up a DAF vehicle for people to get exposure to such funds, so I would recommend talking with him.

But I think expecting returns something like 50-100% p.a. would be reasonable, based on historic performance of these funds. As one intuition pump, suppose that AI and robotics and semiconductors and associated supply chains are about 3% of total capital today, and will grow to be the vast majority of capital after an intelligence explosion, then just being exposed to those industries gives ~30x returns over the coming ~decade, and it is likely possible to do better than this with more targeted bets.

But one might think that this is all lunacy and we should rely more on base rates and the efficient market hypothesis. Seems mistaken to me, but I respect that view too.

Nice!

1. Include the investment rate of return.

This seems like a pretty key thing to include given the huge rates of return seen thus far (and arguably likely to continue) for AI thesis investing.

cG made more AI policy grants than this in 2025! E.g. just from the >$1M bucket, there was also Oxford AI governance Initiative, Global Shield Global Catastrophic Risks Advocacy, Center for a New American Security, GovAI, Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, and maybe others I am missing!

whoops, thanks, fixed

Good point. According to this manifold market an IPO within the next year is ~75% likely.

Fun! (the url at the top points to the /birds rather than /music page by mistake)

Anthropic revenue is actually about $20B I believe.

Good point, that seems like a big risk! I expect the fraction of sentience that is (post)human or digital to be quite high, especially compared to today, in the intergalactic future. But improving values wrt wild animals seems important.

A world of intelligence too cheap to meter is more teleological: constraints and tradeoffs that exist now are washed away, and what matters is mainly what people ultimately value. And more people ultimately value animal welfare than animal diswelfare. The main game is wild animals, and the ~only way for things to go well for them is if we build an ASI that can eventually reshape the natural world to be less suffering filled. I think it is very unlikely farmed animal suffering is exported to other galaxies in a major way, because at technological maturity animals will not be the mose efficient way to meet human material needs.

Also, for those of us working in AI governance, 'cG' and 'CIGI' (the Center for International Governance Innovation) sound the same out loud. But in writing, I tend to use cG too.