# Cari Tuna Cari Tuna (b. 1986) is the **co-founder and president of Good Ventures** (2011-present), the private foundation she and her husband [[Dustin Moskovitz]] established to direct their philanthropy, and a co-founder of **Open Philanthropy** (2014). A former *Wall Street Journal* reporter, Tuna left journalism in 2011 to lead the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropic operation full-time, and across the 2011-2024 period has operationally directed what has become one of the three or four largest institutional Effective Altruism funding sources — deploying several billion dollars in combined grantmaking through Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy across the EA movement's core cause areas (global health and development, farm animal welfare, AI safety, biosecurity, U.S. policy, and scientific research). Moskovitz and Tuna are signatories to the **Giving Pledge** (2015), publicly committing the majority of their wealth to philanthropy, and their 2024 net worth is estimated at $14-18 billion depending on Asana valuation. Tuna matters for the KB for three reasons. First, she is the **principal operational figure in the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropic operation** — Moskovitz is the fortune's source, but the day-to-day grantmaking decisions, organizational governance, and public representation of the philanthropy have substantially been Tuna's work across more than a decade. Second, the **Good Ventures / Open Philanthropy pairing** is one of the most documented cases in the KB of the EA movement's institutional finance structure — Good Ventures holds the Moskovitz-Tuna assets; Open Philanthropy makes the grant decisions; [[Holden Karnofsky]] and successor Alexander Berger have run the operational infrastructure — and Tuna's role is the structural link that makes the arrangement function. Third, her **pre-philanthropic career as a journalist** produced a background distinct from typical Silicon Valley philanthropists — Tuna covered Silicon Valley and startups for the *WSJ* (and met Moskovitz while interviewing him for a feature story), and her approach to philanthropy has consistently emphasized journalistic research rigor, transparency, and willingness to publish uncertain or critical evaluations. ## Background - Born 1986 in Bloomington, Minnesota - BA from Yale University (2008, political science) - *Wall Street Journal* reporter covering Silicon Valley and startups (2008-2011) - Met Dustin Moskovitz while reporting on him for a *WSJ* feature - Married Dustin Moskovitz in 2013 - Co-founder and president, Good Ventures (2011-present) - Co-founder, Open Philanthropy (2014-present; board member) - Based in San Francisco ## The Journalism-to-Philanthropy Transition Tuna's career transition is a documented piece of her public biography. As a *WSJ* reporter covering the Silicon Valley beat in the late 2000s and early 2010s, she was positioned at the intersection of the journalism-tech-startup ecosystem. Her feature writing on founders (including the story about Moskovitz that led to their meeting) gave her detailed exposure to the technology industry at the founder level. Her 2011 decision to leave the *WSJ* to run the philanthropy full-time — at age 25 — was unusual: most philanthropic leadership roles at major foundations are staffed by experienced philanthropy or nonprofit operators. Tuna has publicly described the decision as motivated by the combination of the scale of resources Moskovitz's Facebook equity represented and the lack of existing philanthropic infrastructure within the Moskovitz operation to direct those resources effectively. The journalistic background has been a consistent influence on her approach to philanthropy. Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy have been among the most transparent major philanthropic operations in public reporting of their decision-making, grant evaluations, and explicit acknowledgments of errors and uncertainties — an approach distinct from traditional foundation opacity. ## Good Ventures Founding (2011) Tuna and Moskovitz established Good Ventures in 2011 as the private foundation to hold and direct their philanthropic resources. The early-period approach: - **Research-first**: Rather than making grants based on existing personal networks, Tuna led an extensive evaluation of charity-evaluation methodologies, eventually identifying GiveWell as the most rigorous operation - **GiveWell partnership**: Initial grants directed through GiveWell's top charities recommendations, providing GiveWell with a much larger funding base than its retail donors alone could produce - **Expansion of scope**: Over 2012-2014, Good Ventures expanded beyond GiveWell's global-health focus into additional cause areas, which led to the GiveWell Labs (later Open Philanthropy) partnership ## Open Philanthropy Co-Founding (2014) The 2014 launch of what became Open Philanthropy formalized the Good Ventures / GiveWell partnership into a more structured institutional arrangement: - **Good Ventures** holds and distributes the financial resources - **Open Philanthropy** (initially "GiveWell Labs") makes the strategic and grant-level decisions, with its own leadership and staff - **Tuna as board member**: Tuna serves on Open Philanthropy's board and has co-authored some of its public communications, but day-to-day grantmaking is handled by Open Philanthropy's leadership (initially [[Holden Karnofsky]], subsequently Alexander Berger from 2021) The arrangement allows Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropy to scale to professional-grantmaking levels without requiring the founders to personally manage the grantmaking process — a structural design that has been influential for other Silicon Valley philanthropy operations. ## Cause Area Strategy Tuna has publicly described the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropy's cause-area strategy as guided by the following considerations: - **Scale of resources at stake**: The foundation has committed to deploying the majority of Moskovitz's wealth within their lifetimes, requiring deployment at a rate compatible with absorbing large grants across multiple areas - **Evidence-based selection**: Cause-area selection has been guided by quantitative cost-effectiveness evaluation where possible, with explicit acknowledgment of uncertainty for longtermist-type causes where cost-effectiveness is harder to estimate - **Portfolio approach**: Grantmaking is distributed across causes (global health, animal welfare, AI safety, biosecurity, U.S. policy) rather than concentrated in a single cause - **Public transparency**: Grant decisions and reasoning are published, including cases where Open Philanthropy explicitly states it's uncertain whether the grant will produce positive impact ## Giving Pledge (2015) Moskovitz and Tuna signed the Giving Pledge in February 2015, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills. The pledge letter is publicly available and outlines their commitment to evidence-based giving. At the time of the pledge, Moskovitz's wealth was estimated at ~$9 billion; subsequent Asana IPO (2020) and market fluctuations have kept the wealth in the $10-20 billion range across the 2020s. ## Post-FTX Period The November 2022 FTX collapse had significant effects on the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropy: - **Backstop funding**: Open Philanthropy absorbed or continued funding some grants that had been paid by the FTX Future Fund before its collapse - **EA movement scale**: With FTX Future Fund removed as a major EA funder, Good Ventures / Open Philanthropy became an even more disproportionate share of total EA funding - **Governance scrutiny**: Tuna has made public comments about governance failures at EA-adjacent organizations and the need for institutional reforms ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[Dustin Moskovitz]]**: Spouse; source of the philanthropic resources; co-founder of all the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropic institutions. - **[[Good Ventures]]**: Co-founder and president; the foundation that holds the Moskovitz-Tuna assets. - **[[Open Philanthropy]]**: Co-founder and board member; the operational grantmaking organization. - **[[Holden Karnofsky]]**: Long-term philanthropic partner; ran Open Philanthropy through 2021. - **[[GiveWell]]**: The initial grantee and still a Good Ventures partner; the evaluation methodology that shaped the broader approach. - **[[Effective Altruism]]**: One of the principal institutional funders of the movement. - **[[Longtermism]] / AI safety funding**: Principal philanthropic decision-maker for longtermist and AI safety grantmaking at scale. ## See Also - [[Dustin Moskovitz]] - [[Holden Karnofsky]] - [[Good Ventures]] - [[Open Philanthropy]] - [[GiveWell]] - [[William MacAskill]] - [[Effective Altruism]]