Fundraising for Mox: coworking & events in SF — EA Forum
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Austin
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This is a 2025 funding announcement for a physical AI safety community hub in San Francisco, relevant to those interested in ecosystem infrastructure and coordination efforts within the AI safety and EA communities.
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AI safetyBuilding effective altruismEffective givingOpportunities to take actionAnnouncements and updatesCoworking spacesFunding request (open)
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Summary
Austin (from Manifund) is fundraising for Mox, a coworking and events space in San Francisco aimed at supporting AI safety and EA community work. The project addresses the gap of having no major AI safety hub in SF despite most AI labs being located there, launching a beta in February 2025 with 40+ members. Funding is sought to expand operations and community-building activities.
Key Points
- •Mox fills a geographic gap: most AI safety hubs are in Berkeley, but key AI labs and talent are concentrated in San Francisco.
- •Beta launched February 2025 with 40+ members; fundraising now underway via Manifund platform.
- •Goals include providing coworking space and hosting events to connect AI safety researchers and practitioners in SF.
- •The project uses impact certificates as part of its funding and accountability structure.
- •Founded by Austin, who previously worked at Manifund and consulted with leaders at Constellation, Lighthaven, FAR Labs, and OpenPhil.
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# Fundraising for Mox: coworking & events in SF
By Austin
Published: 2025-03-31
*Hey! Austin here. At Manifund, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to help AI go well. One question that bothered me: so much of the important work on AI is done in SF, so why are all the AI safety hubs in Berkeley? (I’d often consider this specifically while stuck in traffic over the Bay Bridge.)*
*I spoke with leaders at Constellation, Lighthaven, FAR Labs, OpenPhil; nobody had a good answer. Everyone said “yeah, an SF hub makes sense, I really hope somebody else does it”. Eventually, I decided to be that somebody else.*
*Now we’re raising money for our new coworking & events space: Mox. We launched our beta in Feb, onboarding 40+ members, and are excited to grow from here. If Mox excites you too, we’d love your support; donate at* [*https://manifund.org/projects/mox-a-coworking--events-space-in-sf*](https://manifund.org/projects/mox-a-coworking--events-space-in-sf)
### Project summary
Mox is a 2-floor, 20k sq ft venue, established to bring together EA & AI safety folks with the SF tech scene and labs. Since launching 6 weeks ago, we’ve onboarded 40+ coworking members and hosted 20 events: hackathons and bootcamps, dinners and retreats.
We’re now raising funding to expand Mox into a premier hub. We’re inspired by what Constellation, Lighthaven, and FAR Labs have achieved in Berkeley, and intend to build upon their example, in San Francisco: the city that is ground zero for transformative work.
### What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?
The main elements of Mox:
* **Coworking & offices**: We host daytime members, who use Mox as their primary workplace. Currently our members are small teams and individuals, with a mix of EA orgs, AI safety researchers, and startup founders. We’re also speaking with “anchor” orgs like Epoch AI to situate their offices here.
* **Community space**: We’re positioned as a “weekend office”, for folks at eg Anthropic, OpenAI, and METR to work and mingle. We encourage member-run gatherings like blog club, paper reading groups, lightning talks and yoga.
* **Public events**: As a large, central venue with easy access to both SF and East Bay, Mox is ideal for hackathons, speaker talks, happy hours, unconferences and the occasional party. We organize our own events, and also rent our space to aligned organizers.
* **Project incubation**: as a medium-term goal, we’d like to host external fellowships or incubators (eg for MATS, FLF, or Apart), or run our own in-house accelerator.
Our north star is approximately: “bring together people who are insanely great.” In pursuit of this, we’ll move fast, stay flexible, try out many approaches, and double down on whatever shows promise.
Mox isn’t a
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