Effective altruism draws record funding as AI IPOs near
The AI boom is minting a new class of ultra-wealthy philanthropists — and the movement they fund is taking in more money than ever before, just as Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to go public.
Effective altruism, the giving movement that took a beating from Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud conviction, is pulling in record donations as Anthropic and OpenAI head toward IPOs that could create a wave of new millionaires, a Financial Times investigation found.
Donations to charities the Giving What We Can platform classifies as "effective giving" reached about $2 billion in 2025 from 80,000 donors — up from $1.2 billion a year earlier and under $300 million in 2018. The FT identified more than 60 current and former Anthropic employees who have pledged on the platform to donate at least 10% of their income, while the company's seven co-founders — each worth an estimated $8 billion — have separately pledged to give away 80% of their wealth, implying billions in future donations. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have confidentially filed for IPOs at valuations above $1 trillion, and leaders at both companies, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, are close to the movement. "There is an EA slant to employees at these places, for sure," said David Goldberg, president of Founders Pledge, which brokers giving commitments from founders.
The revival is a striking reversal for a philosophy that was forced into a reckoning when Bankman-Fried — once its most prominent advocate — was convicted of fraud. "There was a drop in general enthusiasm for EA a year after [SBF]... but we've more than recovered from that by now," Giving What We Can CEO Sjir Hoeijmakers told the FT. EA directs money toward causes its supporters believe deliver the most measurable impact — global health, animal welfare, and AI safety among them — and some beneficiaries are already preparing for a windfall. The Shrimp Welfare Project, which funds electric stunning for wild-caught shrimp, says it plans to deploy additional funding fast if it arrives. Critics remain: Amy Schiller, author of The Price of Humanity, argues the movement's quantification of moral choices reduces charity to calculation and concentrates money in a narrow set of priorities.
Why it matters: the wealth created by AI is becoming a force in philanthropy, and a meaningful share is earmarked for AI safety and other EA priorities — meaning the people building the most powerful models are also shaping how the world funds the response to them. The FT reports that technical AI safety research is already less constrained by funding than by grantmakers' capacity to evaluate projects, and the report is the second in the paper's "Wave of AI Wealth" series. We've covered the run-up from the finance side — OpenAI's revenue run rate tops $40B ahead of IPO.
What to watch: whether the IPO windfall actually materializes, and whether the movement can spend it without repeating the FTX-era mistakes. "One of the big lessons learnt [from FTX] is you need to be serious, you need to do your due diligence," said Lewis Bollard, who directs the Farm Animal Welfare Fund at Coefficient Giving.
Will AI's new millionaires actually honor their giving pledges — and does it matter where the money lands? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Financial Times · Techmeme
