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Announcing the Future Fund
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Nick_Beckstead·leopold·William_MacAskill·ketanrama
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3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
Historically significant as one of the largest longtermist funding initiatives announced; its collapse with FTX in late 2022 had major consequences for AI safety and EA funding landscapes and prompted serious reflection on donor concentration risks.
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372
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eaforum
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Building effective altruismCareer choiceExistential riskEffective altruism fundingFuture FundFTX FoundationFunding opportunitiesLongtermismOrganization updates
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Importance: 52/100blog postnews
Summary
The FTX Foundation announced the Future Fund in February 2022, a longtermist philanthropic initiative led by Nick Beckstead, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Will MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, committing to distribute $100M–$1B in 2022 for AI safety, biosecurity, institutional improvement, and effective altruism. The fund offered open grant applications, a regranting program for independent grantmakers, and a project ideas competition.
Key Points
- •Planned to distribute at least $100M in 2022, with capacity up to $1B, across longtermist cause areas including AI safety and biosecurity.
- •Led by Nick Beckstead (CEO), Leopold Aschenbrenner, Will MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, funded primarily by Sam Bankman-Fried via FTX.
- •Launched a regranting program offering discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers to surface projects outside the team's existing network.
- •Accepted applications from both nonprofits and for-profits, with no cap on requested amounts, emphasizing scalable and high-impact projects.
- •Subsequently collapsed in November 2022 following FTX's bankruptcy, becoming a cautionary case study in EA funding concentration and governance.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| FTX Future Fund | Organization | 60.0 |
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Announcing the Future Fund — EA Forum
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by Nick_Beckstead , leopold , William_MacAskill , ketanrama Feb 28 2022 4 min read 185 372
Building effective altruism Career choice Existential risk Effective altruism funding Future Fund FTX Foundation Funding opportunities Longtermism Organization updates Frontpage Announcing the Future Fund About the FTX Foundation Our 2022 plans Wrapping up 189 comments This is a linkpost for https://ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-the-future-fund/ We’re thrilled to announce the FTX Foundation's Future Fund : a philanthropic fund making grants and investments to ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. We plan to distribute at least $100M this year, and potentially a lot more, depending on how many outstanding opportunities we find. In principle, we’d be able to deploy up to $1B this year.
We have a longlist of project ideas that we’d love to fund, but it’s not exhaustive—we’re open to a broad range of ideas. We’re particularly keen to launch massively scalable projects : projects that could grow to productively spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Our areas of interest include the safe development of artificial intelligence, reducing catastrophic biorisk, improving institutions, economic growth, great power relations, effective altruism, and more.
If you’d like to launch one of our proposed projects , or have another idea for a project in our areas of interest —please apply ! Please submit your applications by March 21 to be considered in our first open funding round.
UPDATE: Our first open funding round closed on March 21, and we are no longer accepting applications. We do not currently have any plans to resume accepting applications, and we do not know if or when we will do so. If we decide to start accepting applications again, we will announce this decision on ftxfuturefund.org and with another post on the EA Forum.
We can’t wait to see your applications!
Some further details:
On the same apply page , you can also express interest in working with us, recommend a grant or investment to us, or recommend a prize for us to launch.
We fund non-profits and for-profits alike, so long as they are aligned with our mission. We aim to respond quickly, ask for the information that is needed and no more, and keep you posted on when to expect a final decision. We are willing to make big bets, and we respect grantee autonomy. There is no limit on how much you can apply for.
You can read about our principles and approach to funding on our website.
In addition to our request for projects, today we’re launching:
Our Regranting Program . We’re offering discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers. Our hope is that regrantors will fund great people and projects that weren’t
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