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"Announcing the Future Fund" (February 2022)
webftxfuturefund.org·ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-the-future-fund/
This announcement is historically significant as it represented a major influx of funding into AI safety and longtermist causes; the subsequent collapse of FTX in late 2022 made it a cautionary reference point for funding concentration risks in the AI safety ecosystem.
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Summary
The FTX Future Fund announced its launch as a major philanthropic initiative focused on improving humanity's long-term prospects, with AI safety and existential risk reduction as core priorities. The fund committed to deploying hundreds of millions of dollars across grants, investments, and regrants to support individuals and organizations working on these issues. It represented one of the largest dedicated funding sources for longtermist and AI safety causes at the time of its announcement.
Key Points
- •FTX Future Fund launched with a focus on longtermist priorities including AI safety, biosecurity, and reducing existential risk.
- •The fund planned to deploy large amounts of capital through grants, investments, and a regrantor program to scale impact.
- •AI safety and governance were explicitly listed among the fund's key focus areas, signaling major new resources for the field.
- •The fund's collapse in November 2022 following FTX's bankruptcy had significant negative consequences for AI safety funding ecosystems.
- •Represented a high-water mark for EA-aligned philanthropic ambition in AI safety before the FTX crisis.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| FTX Collapse: Lessons for EA Funding Resilience | Concept | 78.0 |
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Announcing the Future Fund - Future Fund
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Principles
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Announcing the Future Fund
02/28/2022
We’re thrilled to announce the FTX 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 our Apply page 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 if we fund you, we won’t micromanage your work. 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 additio
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