# Dustin Moskovitz Dustin Aaron Moskovitz (b. 1984) is the **co-founder of Facebook (with Mark Zuckerberg, 2004), co-founder and CEO of the project-management software company Asana, and — with his wife Cari Tuna — the largest single funder of the Effective Altruism and longtermism movements**. Through [[Good Ventures]] (the couple's foundation) and Open Philanthropy (renamed Coefficient Giving in November 2025), Moskovitz and Tuna have directed approximately $4 billion across EA-adjacent priorities since founding the operation in 2011, including roughly $46 million on AI safety alone in 2023. Moskovitz is a Giving Pledge signatory who has committed to giving away the majority of his fortune during his lifetime. Moskovitz matters for the KB for three reasons. First, he is the **single most important funder** of the TESCREAL institutional ecosystem — the organizations, research centers, career-advising programs, and political projects that operationalize Effective Altruism, AI safety, and longtermist philosophy at scale. Without Moskovitz, most of the 2010s-era EA institutions would not exist or would be dramatically smaller. Second, the **Open Philanthropy → AI safety → frontier AI lab** funding pipeline Moskovitz built in the 2015-2023 period is one of the structural reasons why AI safety is a live political and policy concern today rather than a niche academic subfield. Third, his funding of AI policy advocacy (via organizations like Horizon Institute for Public Service, RAND's AI policy work, and direct fellowship placements in federal agencies) gives him a concrete-if-diffuse role in **how AI regulation is developing in Washington**, making him a cross-ideological figure with influence in settings the KB also documents from right-wing angles. Moskovitz is a Democratic donor rather than a Republican donor — the political-donation record is publicly available and leans strongly Democratic, particularly on elections featuring pro-Trump Republicans — which makes his KB relevance structurally different from figures like [[Peter Thiel]] or [[Elon Musk]]. He appears in the KB not as a right-wing funder but as a principal architect of the **ideological and institutional cluster (TESCREAL) that has become culturally dominant in Silicon Valley AI organizations**, and whose cross-cutting politics make it an important feature of the contemporary Silicon Valley political landscape that the KB is mapping. ## Background - Born May 22, 1984, in Gainesville, Florida; grew up in Ocala, Florida - Attended Harvard University (2002-2004); dropped out to work on Facebook - Co-founder of Facebook (2004); was Facebook's first CTO and Vice President of Engineering - Left Facebook in 2008 to co-found Asana with Justin Rosenstein; Asana went public in 2020 - Married journalist-turned-philanthropist Cari Tuna in 2013; three children - Founded Good Ventures (the couple's foundation) in 2011 - Founded Open Philanthropy in 2014 (spun off from GiveWell); now formally Coefficient Giving ## Pre-Philanthropy: Facebook and Asana Moskovitz was one of the four Harvard roommates who co-founded Facebook in February 2004. His equity from Facebook's 2012 IPO — at 7.6% of the company, his stake was briefly worth approximately $5 billion at IPO — became the seed of the subsequent philanthropic work. Moskovitz left Facebook in 2008 to co-found **Asana**, a work-management SaaS company that went public via direct listing in September 2020 and is publicly traded (ASAN). Asana remains Moskovitz's operational day job. The Facebook co-founder origin is relevant because it made Moskovitz, briefly at IPO, one of the youngest self-made billionaires in American history. The wealth base is the necessary precondition for everything that follows. ## Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving (2011-present) The Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropic operation has evolved through several stages: - **2011**: Good Ventures founded, initially funding conventional effective-altruism-adjacent charities identified through GiveWell - **2014**: Open Philanthropy (Open Phil) launched as a joint project with GiveWell, under Holden Karnofsky's leadership - **2017**: Open Phil formally separates from GiveWell as an independent foundation - **November 2025**: Open Philanthropy rebranded as **Coefficient Giving**, consolidating the various organizational layers Open Philanthropy's funding distribution breaks into four broad categories: 1. **Global health and development** — the evidence-based-charity giving descended from the GiveWell origins (bednets, deworming, cash transfers) 2. **AI safety and technical alignment research** — the largest area of giving growth since ~2016; funds MIRI, Redwood Research, the AI Alignment Forum, academic AI safety groups, and a range of fellowships and policy organizations 3. **Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness** — another growth area, accelerated after 2020 4. **Longtermist-adjacent policy work** — AI policy, biosecurity policy, existential-risk reduction Total giving across the operation had crossed approximately $4 billion by mid-2025. **The 2023 AI safety giving alone was approximately $46 million** — making Moskovitz-Tuna the single largest funder of technical AI safety research in the world. ## The EA Movement Spine Moskovitz and Tuna function as the **financial spine** of the Effective Altruism movement, particularly the longtermist wing. The spine structure: - **Open Philanthropy** (now Coefficient Giving) funds the movement's operational institutions — CEA, [[80,000 Hours]], [[Global Priorities Institute]], [[Future of Humanity Institute]] (until its 2024 closure), Forethought Foundation, Rethink Priorities, and dozens of AI safety research organizations - **Career pipeline**: Open Phil funds fellowship programs that place EA-aligned researchers in policy roles (Congressional staff, federal agencies, think tanks) - **Academic adoption**: Open Phil funds academic appointments and research at Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, and other universities to build institutional legitimacy for longtermist questions - **Strategic direction**: Because Open Phil's giving is the single largest source of funding for many EA organizations, its priorities substantially shape what the movement as a whole works on The post-2022 **FTX collapse** stress-tested this arrangement. [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] had been positioning himself as a second mega-funder of EA (via FTX Future Fund), promising multi-billion-dollar giving and recruiting prominent EA figures to advisory roles. FTX's collapse in November 2022 eliminated that alternative funding source and made Moskovitz-Tuna even more central to the movement's survival. The subsequent EA community debate about governance, accountability, and the concentration of authority in a small number of donors (Moskovitz, Tallinn, and previously SBF) is live through the mid-2020s. ## The Guru / Concentration Problem Critics within and adjacent to EA — including scholars like Émile P. Torres and a number of EA community members writing post-FTX — have argued that the Moskovitz-Tuna funding concentration is a structural accountability problem: a small group of donors and foundation staff effectively set the movement's priorities, research agendas, and policy positions. The defense runs that Moskovitz and Tuna have delegated substantive decisions to Open Phil staff and are unusually deferential to research-informed program officers. The dispute matters for the KB because the same structure — concentrated funding shaping the intellectual direction of a movement — is a recurring theme across both left-of-center and right-of-center ecosystems the KB documents. The [[Leonard Leo]] dark-money network, the Koch political operation, and the Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropic operation are structurally similar even though their politics differ. ## Political Donations and Cross-Cutting Politics Moskovitz is a **significant Democratic political donor**. Relevant public-record items: - Major donor to Clinton 2016, Biden 2020, Harris 2024 - Significant funding to anti-Trump PACs across the 2016-2024 period - Funded a range of Democratic Senate candidates and voter-mobilization organizations The political donations are structurally *different* from his philanthropic operation — Open Philanthropy is formally non-partisan and does not make political contributions; political giving is through personal or LLC channels. But the cross-cutting pattern is distinctive: Moskovitz is simultaneously a large Democratic donor *and* a principal funder of the intellectual/ideological cluster (TESCREAL) that has become culturally dominant in Silicon Valley in ways that are politically contested within the broader Silicon Valley environment — including contestation by figures on [[the New Right]] who argue that EA-aligned AI safety work is ideological capture of an important technology sector. ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[Open Philanthropy]] / Coefficient Giving**: The principal funder; the operation that institutionalizes Moskovitz-Tuna priorities at scale. - **[[Effective Altruism]]**: Largest single funder of the movement's institutional infrastructure post-FTX. - **[[Longtermism]]**: Principal funder of longtermist-aligned research and policy work. - **[[TESCREAL]]**: Documented as "the quiet money behind longtermist institutions" in the TESCREAL bundle mapping. - **AI safety ecosystem**: Single largest funder globally; shapes what technical AI safety research gets done and by whom. - **[[LessWrong]] / [[Rationalism]]**: Funds Lightcone Infrastructure and substantial portions of the adjacent ecosystem. - **[[Jaan Tallinn]]**: Parallel funder at somewhat smaller scale; Open Phil and Tallinn's SFF are the two principal funding vehicles for the technical AI safety community. - **[[Anthropic]]**: Listed as an early investor in Anthropic, alongside Tallinn and others — placing Moskovitz inside the investor group of one of the three frontier AI labs. - **Cross-cutting politics**: Large Democratic political donor + principal funder of the ideological cluster the New Right contests. A useful case study in why Silicon Valley politics cannot be reduced to a left-right axis. ## See Also - [[Open Philanthropy]] - [[Effective Altruism]] - [[Longtermism]] - [[TESCREAL]] - [[Jaan Tallinn]] - [[Toby Ord]] - [[William MacAskill]] - [[Holden Karnofsky]] - [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] - [[Cari Tuna]] - [[LessWrong]]