TLDR:
On June 29th we set out to allocate $1M to x-risk grants of under $50k in 4 weeks and promised to communicate decisions by July 27th, which we’ve now done.
Highlight stats can be seen here, along with the applications that we ended up funding.
Another funder directly funded $30k during the round and is in the process of funding ~$200k after the round closed, proving external funder demand.
If you are a potential funder or an org that would be interested in partnering with us in any way, please reach out by emailing hi@grantmaking.ai.
Some Stats
We received a total of 584 applications to date, of which 376 before the round’s deadline (with 138 on a deadline day alone).
143 applications were excluded from consideration, because they didn’t pass the AI filter or were deemed extremely poor or not a fit by the round criteria by our reviewers.
We asked each reviewer to rate applications on (F,C,B,A,S) scale, and considered A and S ratings to be endorsements.
Out of the remaining 441 applications, reviewers endorsed 91, of which 19 received at least one S.
We ended up funding 33 applications, with an average check of ~$30k.
Why we ran this round
grantmaking.ai is an effort to make the x-risk funding ecosystem more open and legible, and provide a platform for donors to coordinate their funding decision, applicants to get seen by many funders at a time, and let everyone interested discuss applications and share their take, be it endorsements or critiques.
The round was a way to jumpstart the platform, attract applications, and provide some signal to funders.
Standout wins
The biggest win is definitely all the grants we’ve made: 33 bets to save the world. Each of them promised to post public updates, so we’ll see how these bets will pan out.
The 500+ applications we have received proved a strong demand (and we believe a $1M commitment, easy application process, and clear deadline is what made it happen)
We were thrilled to learn that another funder used our platform to find over $200k of counterfactual grant opportunities, proving extra funder demand for quality funding asks.
We offered two $25k grantmaking budgets to the most useful commenters during the round. One $25k budget was used by Mark Aiken to recommend 2 grants. Thank you Mark!
Challenges
A third of all grants were finalized by the funder of the round (Anton) based on grantmakers’ ratings and reviews instead of final recommendations by grantmakers directly, as we planned. This gives evidence that quality grant reviewer time is hard to come by.
Some applicants expected that we would be posting a public review / response to every application, and we really wanted to do it, but given the super scarce time of grantmakers - it was completely unfeasible. This is something we may try to improve in the future.
Thanks
Huge thanks to:
Manifund and Austin Chen for handling the funding distribution, connecting us with invaluable grantmakers, and advising on the project.
Gavin Leech, Marcus Abramovitch, and Ryan Kidd for doing the actual grant reviewing.
All the users of the platform who have submitted applications, reviews, and endorsements.
Everyone who gave us a shout-out and helped spread the word.
What’s Next?
Our main mission remains unchanged: facilitate x-risk grantmaking by being a public platform for AI x-risk grantmaking.
For the July round, we aggregated data across the ecosystem, gave applicants a quick and legible way to apply for funding, we evaluated and surfaced great funding requests, and helped funders find and fund great projects. We consider it a great launch!
On the wider ecosystem - we are very excited for Lightcone Commons and the Transformative AI Fund that recently launched and hope and believe they will be key players in x-risk grants, however we still believe there is much to be gained from a more open platform that would be legible to a wider audience.
We have many ideas for the future of grantmaking.ai, and see a lot of great opportunities, but it will take some time to finalize the plans and launch the next phase. Subscribe to this Substack to hear about future rounds or launches.
If you are a potential funder or an org that would be interested in partnering with us in any way, please reach out by emailing hi@grantmaking.ai.
Thank you, Anton, for launching this initiative. I would like to congratulate everyone for their efforts to help reduce AI x-risks.