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How A.I.’s Most Powerful Backers Are Preparing for Its Consequences

The founders and investors driving A.I. are also funding efforts to contain its risks, ease disruption and widen access to its benefits.

A.I.’s biggest power players are not leaving the technology’s consequences to governments alone. Through their philanthropy, the same founders and investors pushing the A.I. industry forward are spending billions to contain its risks, soften its economic fallout and spread its benefits beyond Silicon Valley. 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 betting on 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 help health workers and farmers, particularly in lower-income countries.

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Their giving also extends beyond A.I., flowing into everything from pandemic preparedness and ocean exploration to economic mobility and vaccines. Many have also signed the Giving Pledge, which asks the ultra-wealthy to commit 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........

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