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SFF-2025 S-Process Recommendations
websurvivalandflourishing.fund·survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/recommendations
SFF is a major philanthropic funder in the AI safety space; its annual S-Process recommendations signal which organizations and research directions are considered high-priority by influential EA-aligned donors, useful for understanding the funding landscape.
Metadata
Importance: 45/100organizational reportreference
Summary
The Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) publishes its 2025 grant recommendations resulting from its S-Process, a structured deliberation method used to allocate funding across AI safety, existential risk reduction, and related cause areas. The recommendations reflect the collective judgment of a group of independent donors about which organizations and projects merit philanthropic support. This serves as a public record of EA-aligned grantmaking priorities in the AI safety ecosystem.
Key Points
- •SFF uses the 'S-Process' (Summary Process), a structured approach where multiple donors independently evaluate and reach consensus on funding allocations.
- •Recommendations cover a range of AI safety and existential risk organizations, providing insight into which groups are considered high-impact by major funders.
- •The public nature of these recommendations helps the broader AI safety community understand funding priorities and organizational credibility signals.
- •SFF focuses on longtermist and existential risk causes, making these recommendations particularly relevant to the AI safety funding landscape.
- •The 2025 cycle reflects current donor thinking on the most promising interventions for reducing catastrophic and existential risk from AI.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Organization | 59.0 |
6 FactBase facts citing this source
| Entity | Property | Value | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Center for Humane Technology | Grant Received | $468,000 | 2025 |
| Institute for AI Policy and Strategy | Grant Received | $572,000 | 2025 |
| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Revenue | $34.3 million | 2025 |
| AI Policy Institute | Grant Received | $1.6 million | 2025 |
| GovAI | Grant Received | $756,000 | 2025 |
| Center for AI Safety | Grant Received | $1.1 million | 2025 |
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In 2025, twelve people across three tracks participated as “Recommenders” (grant evaluators) in a single round of a grant-recommendation process for Funder Jaan Tallinn. The round featured three tracks: the [Main Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-main-track-announcement), the [Fairness Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-fairness-track-announcement), and the [Freedom Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-freedom-track-announcement). The following Recommenders in this round agreed to have their identities made public:
- Malo Bourgon (Main Track)
- Nate Soares (Main Track)
- Nathan Labenz (Main Track)
- Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh (Main Track)
- Atoosa Kasirzadeh (Fairness Track)
- Bálint Gyevnár (Fairness Track)
- Irene Solaiman (Fairness Track)
- Nell Watson (Freedom Track)
- Zvi Mowshowitz (Freedom Track)
Two Main Track Recommenders and one Freedom Track Recommender have chosen to remain anonymous.
### How final grant amounts were determined
#### The “S-Process”
We call the recommendation process used in this grant round the “ [S-Process](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/s-process)”, for “Simulation Process”, because it involves allowing the Recommenders and Funder to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of [marginal utility functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility). Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, the Funder specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the Funder to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts.
_The S-Process app is still being developed for broader use._
#### Synthetic Mean Recommender
We used Recommenders’ inputs to create a Synthetic Mean Recommender. This feature acts as a simulated Recommender, generating grant recommendations by using an average of all the Recommenders’ utility functions weighted to give each Recommender an equal amount of influence.
#### Tracks
Two specialized tracks, the [Fairness Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-fairness-track-announcement) and the [Freedom Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-freedom-track-announcement), ran with three Recommenders each, in parallel with the [Main Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2025/application#sff-2025-main-track-announcement) which had six Recommenders. Applicants could specifically flag their application for consideration by Recommenders in the Freedom Track, the Fairness Track, or both. All guaranteed eligible applications (applications which received an approval of their [Speculation Grant](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/speculation-grants) request) were qualified t
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