The future looked grim for Ryan Carrier.
A decade ago, the former hedge fund manager watched AI systems spiral into chaos. Facebook’s algorithms meddled in elections. A Microsoft chatbot claimed the Holocaust didn’t exist. Tesla’s Autopilot caused a fatal crash. There was no governance. No oversight. Just a bleeding edge cutting toward a cliff.
To Carrier, the world awaiting his kids was dark.
So he founded ForHumanity. His goal? Build tools to audit AI systems. He’s been at it since 2016.
But the money was slow. The organization remained a minor player, scraping by with hundreds of thousands in funding.
That dynamic is about to shift violently.
ForHumanity is now fighting for a slice of what could be the largest wave of philanthropy the world has seen in decades. The trigger? A tidal wave of wealth flowing from upcoming IPOs at Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs.
OpenAI. Anthropic. Two nearly trillion-dollar giants are preparing to go public. When they do, hundreds of current and former employees will become ultrawealthy almost overnight. And a significant chunk of that population follows a specific philosophy: effective altruism.
This isn’t just about giving. It’s about maximizing impact. Quickly.
The $15 Billion Question
Who is bringing the cash?
Anthropic’s seven founders have pledged 80% of their wealth to charity. The company even offers a matching gift program: for every share an employee commits to donating, Anthropic contributes one or three additional shares, capped at a specific limit.
Tech insiders are already crunching numbers. They estimate Anthropic’s IPO—which may drop in September—could generate $15 billion in annual philanthropic giving alone.
Think about that scale.
That single figure could boost total US charitable giving by 2.5% annually. In practical terms? That’s like adding the generosity of four Bill Gates to the global pool every single year.
Anthropic declined to comment on specific donation totals or beneficiary organizations. But the pressure is palpable.
Not all this money will materialize. IPOs get delayed. Markets tank. Employees might panic and hold onto their shares. Or, perhaps more likely, they’ll face choice paralysis. With so many “worthy” causes vying for attention, many may decide keeping the money feels safer.
Still, the competition for those donor wallets is already fierce.
Jack Lewars, a consultant advising 13 of the wealthiest tech and finance workers, reports that employees at top AI labs receive up to 20 unsolicited donation emails every week.
WIRED spoke to 18 nonprofits. Dozens more were approached.
Did any send cold pitches? Not publicly admitted. As Lewars notes on his blog, The Funding Anthropalypse, those cold emails “have next to no chance of working.”
Instead, these organizations are preparing for war. They are hiring faster. Automating more. Training staff. The goal? To look ready when the capital hits.
One education nonprofit didn’t mince words in a job posting: build relationships at Anthropic. Priority one.
“Everybody’s going to go after these funds,” says Christine Peterson. She’s a cofounder of the Foresight Institute, a grantmaking group backed by Anthropic employees. “It’s going to be a wild ride.”
Inside the Race for Funding
ForHumanity’s Carrier admits he’s trying to focus on the mission. Auditing AI. Keeping the tech safe. But he knows he can’t ignore the money.
“I just have to get in that room,” he says. He’s now thinking about attending San Francisco’s IPO parties. Desperation? Ambition? Probably both.
Bo Young Lee, CEO of AI4ALL, is taking a broader approach. She’s attending events. Publishing more research. Asking board member Fei-Fei Li to make introductions.
AI4ALL trains young adults to build AI models. Their mission is diversifying the tech workforce. Lee has set “ambitious” fundraising goals. She believes the money will come. The introductory meetings? They haven’t happened yet.
Not everyone thinks individual donations are the answer.
Buck Shlegeris runs Redwood Research, a Berkeley-based nonprofit focused on AI safety. He argues targeting individual donors is inefficient.
Instead, Redwood relies on grant-making intermediaries like Coefficient Giving and the Survival and Flourishing Fund. These groups pool money from effective altruists and distribute it to smaller organizations. Shlegeris expects new money to flow to these hubs first, then trickle down.
Redwood is prepping for expansion. They are training staffers to manage larger budgets and tackle “crazy expensive projects.” Like automating safety research. Or training Redwood’s own models to prevent extinction-level events.
Shlegeris fears this risk is real. “Really strong chance,” he says.
Then there’s biosecurity.
A subset of AI safety focuses on preventing bioweapons. Geoff Ralston, a venture capitalist, recently helped draft a plan to raise $2.5 billion over five years to tackle AI biosecurity.
“The folks at frontier labs understand the threat vectors better than anyone,” Ralston says. He plans to ask them for money.
Building the Port
The anxiety isn’t just about getting money. It’s about handling it.
Several influential grantmakers in the effective altruism space are helping newer nonprofits upgrade their administrative bones. Bookkeeping. HR. Legal.
“We’re trying to build the port before the ship arrivals,” says Stien van der Ploeg. She’s the executive director at Animal Charity Evaluators. Over the past year, that org directed about $15 million to groups fighting farm cruelty.
Coefficient is doing similar work. This month, their largest donors—Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and wife Cari Tuna—committed $1 billion to global health.
That’s a “one-off surge.” Nearly six times bigger than planned. The goal? Create “scalable opportunities” that can absorb massive future giving.
GiveDirectly is also preparing. The nonprofit sends unconditional cash to people in poverty. They quietly raised funds to automate finance and HR systems. They’re building partnerships for faster disaster relief. They’re even exploring a “global AI wealth dividend” for extreme poverty.
CEO Nick Allardice calls the IPO uncertainty “worth taking very seriously.”
The Left Behind?
Here is the catch.
Not every nonprofit fits the effective altruist mold.
Some orgs work on child safety. Political disinformation. Human rights. These groups fear they’ll be ignored by donors focused on existential AI risks or biosecurity.
There’s a deep anxiety that the money will overflow one bucket while leaving others dry. Groups fighting mass surveillance or online harms may see far less funding than those preventing human extinction.
Marlena Wisniak knows this fear well. She runs digital strategy at the European Center for Not-For-Profit Law. She works on AI policy, particularly for groups in the Global South often overlooked by Western donors.
This month, she had a win. A friend at Anthropic donated $100k to one such group.
Now she’s trying to convince OpenAI and Anthropic contacts to share her list of worthy human rights orgs. She’s also teaching these nonprofits to use the language of the elite: “theory of change.” “Evidence-backed.” Words that resonate with effective altruists.
But some groups are walking away.
Model Evaluation and Threat Research decides not to solicit funds from OpenAI or Anthropic employees. Why? Independence. Taking their money could jeopardize their ability to critique them objectively.
Others fear the “effective altruism” label itself. Critics call the movement insular and misguided. Some nonprofits worry this association will scare away other partners.
An adviser to several EA-aligned groups pushed back. They argue the reputational fears are overblown. The movement continues to grow its funding, talent, and actual impact.
The Cost of Easy Money
Veteran nonprofit workers are urging caution.
Don’t contort your mission just to fit the new money mold. Don’t neglect core work because the pay is better elsewhere.
And remember where this money comes from.
It’s a byproduct of building tools that may be worsening the very problems these nonprofits try to fix.
“The risk today is this industrialized wealth… may not serve human good in hindsight,” AI4ALL’s Lee warns. “We have to avoid the allure of simple money simply to appease the prioritization the wealthy.”
The surge has already started showing effects.
Salaries are rising. As funding concentrates in fields with limited talent pools, pay scales jump.
Resolution, an AI safety nonprofit, recently announced a $160 million grant. It’s Coefficient’s largest award ever. Combined with the expected IPO influx, Resolution said they can pay “well above nonprofit and academic norms.”
It works. For now.
But how long does the boom last? And who is left holding the bag when the hype fades?
The port is built. The ship is coming.
Whether it brings salvation or just a bigger problem remains to be seen.
