Grants (Discontinued)

BERI and BSF distributed a combined total of ~$5.9MM as part of our grants programs. In addition to this amount, BERI and BSF granted $2.5MM and $733k (respectively) to the Survival and Flourishing Fund for further regranting.

  • BERI is no longer accepting applications for grants, and we do not have plans to administer new grants in the future.

  • BERI ran a competitive round of grants for individuals in November 2018. We are currently administering those grants, some of which had grant terms spanning multiple years. We do not have plans to administer individual grants again in the future.

Grants disbursed:

Date Grantee Category Disbursing Entity Amount Purpose
9/13/2017 Machine Intelligence Research Institute Organization BERI $100,000 Unrestricted
10/27/2017 Future of Life Institute Organization BERI $100,000 Unrestricted
10/27/2017 Future of Life Institute Organization BERI $50,000 Unrestricted
12/15/2017 Institute for Philosophical Research Organization BERI $25,000 Unrestricted
12/18/2017 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Organization BERI $20,000 Restricted - "for the support of the 2018 conference on AI, Ethics, and Society"
12/27/2017 Center for Applied Rationality Organization BERI $100,000 Unrestricted
12/28/2017 Machine Intelligence Research Institute Organization BERI $100,000 Unrestricted
1/2/2018 Miles Brundage Individual BERI $32,500 Academic Research Award
1/24/2018 Global Catastrophic Risks Institute (via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs) Organization BERI $25,000 Unrestricted
1/26/2018 Center for Applied Rationality Organization BERI $800,000 Unrestricted
2/8/2018 LessWrong 2.0 (via the Center for Applied Rationality) Organization BERI $100,000 Restricted - "for the support of activities to develop and improve the website LessWrong 2.0"
3/30/2018 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Organization BERI $5,000 Restricted - "for the support of the 2018 AAAI Spring Symposium on AI and Society: Ethics, Safety and Trustworthiness in Intelligent Agents."
4/6/2018 Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (via Cambridge in America) Organization BERI $200,000 Unrestricted
4/10/2018 Future of Life Institute Organization BERI $300,000 Unrestricted
7/12/2018 Theiss Organization BERI $50,000 Restricted - "support research intended to reduce existential risk"
7/24/2018 UC Berkeley Foundation Organization BERI $400,000 Unrestricted
7/24/2018 Center for Applied Rationality Organization BERI $300,000 Unrestricted
9/4/2018 LessWrong 2.0 (via the Center for Applied Rationality) Organization BERI $150,000 Restricted - "for the support of activities to develop and improve the website LessWrong 2.0"
9/7/2018 Institute for Philosophical Research Organization BERI $50,000 Unrestricted
9/24/2018 Luca Rade Individual - PG1 BERI $20,400 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Luca will research the implications of coarse-graining by an agent in a complex environment for AI alignment.
9/24/2018 Jamison Bryce Hidysmith Individual - PG1 BERI $20,500 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Bryce will analyze global risks from technology through a geopolitical lens.
9/24/2018 Jordan Alexander Individual - PG1 BERI $1,900 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Jordan will host several meetings at Stanford EA and the Stanford Transhumanist Association.
9/26/2018 David Manheim Individual - PG1 BERI $25,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. David will research aspects of Goodhart’s law, focusing on multi-agent dynamics.
10/2/2018 Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (via Cambridge in America) Organization BERI $10,000 Unrestricted
10/2/2018 Baeo Maltinsky Individual - PG1 BERI $55,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Baeo will further his research on AI and technology trends.
10/2/2018 Roxanne Heston Individual - PG1 BERI $49,532 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Roxanne will work on a variety of AI policy projects in Washington, D.C.
10/2/2018 Colleen McKenzie Individual - PG1 BERI $51,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support Colleen's research on AI timelines and the processes that produce technical and scientific progress.
10/2/2018 Zoe Cremer Individual - PG1 BERI $25,200 Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support Zoe as a visiting fellow at CFI, where she will research disagreements about the amount and kind of structure required for AGI
10/9/2018 Stephanie Zolayvar Individual - PG1 BERI $100,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Stephanie will train herself in circling and host circles for people who are promising contributors to reducing x-risk.
10/10/2018 Jessica Taylor Individual - PG1 BERI $10,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Jessica will work on her research in AI alignment and other areas.
10/10/2018 Ben Goldhaber Individual - PG1 BERI $150,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support his project (co-lead by Jacob Lagerros) to bring x-risk-relevant questions to popular prediction platforms.
10/15/2018 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Organization BERI $20,000 Restricted - "for the support of the 2019 Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society conference."
10/18/2018 Markus Stoor (via EA Sweden) Organization (facilitating a PG1 project) BERI $4,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Effective Altruism Sweden will support Markus Stoor’s project to coordinate two follow-up lunch-to-lunch meetings in Sweden for x-risk-focused individuals.
10/23/2018 Sarah D Spikes Individual - PG1 BERI $24,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Sarah will implement improvements in support of the Rationality and Effective Altruism Community Hub (REACH).
10/24/2018 Justin Shovelain Individual - PG1 BERI $100,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Justin will lead and develop “Convergence Analysis”, a new group focused on x-risk strategy research.
10/31/2018 (Aiken) Sebastian Farquhar Individual - PG1 BERI $12,000 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Sebastian will attend conferences and purchase compute for experiments related to his PhD research on uncertainty modeling in neural networks.
12/27/2018 Lucius Caviola Individual - PG1 BERI $44,353 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Lucius will conduct research on the psychology of existential risk.
1/22/2019 Leverage Research Organization BERI $25,000 Unrestricted
1/24/2019 Stefan Schubert Individual - PG1 BERI $86,580 Restricted to Project Grant activities. Stefan will conduct research on the psychology of existential risk.
2/26/2019 MIRI Organization BSF $600,000 Unrestricted
3/12/2019 ALLFED Organization BSF $25,000 Unrestricted
4/8/2019 Yarin Gal (via Americans for Oxford) Organization BSF $25,000 Unrestricted
4/9/2019 Leverage Research Organization BSF $50,000 Unrestricted
4/22/2019 80,000 Hours (via CEA U.S.) Organization BSF $350,000 Restricted to 80,000 Hours
4/22/2019 Future of Life Institute Organization BSF $50,000 Unrestricted
6/10/2019 Global Catastrophic Risks Institute (via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs) Organization BERI $85,000 Unrestricted
8/18/2019 Center for Applied Rationality Organization BERI $300,000 General Support
1/1/2020 Survival and Flourishing Organization BERI $10,000 General Support of Survival and Flourishing (SAF)
3/2/2020 Machine Intelligence Research Institute Organization BERI $300,000 Unrestricted
8/7/2020 Survival and Flourishing Organization BERI $375,000 General Support of Survival and Flourishing (SAF)


Note that for some grants, payments were sent (or will be sent) in multiple disbursements (and some disbursements depend on meeting pre-specified benchmarks), thus the individual or organization may not have received the entire amount listed on the date listed.