Transparency and Financials

Since its founding in 2000, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute has had thousands of distinct donors. Our largest contributors, each of whom has given at least $500,000, are:

• An anonymous Ethereum cryptocurrency investor in 2018 and 2021.
• Open Philanthropy, a joint initiative with the philanthropic foundation Good Ventures.
• Vitalik Buterin, the inventor and co-founder of Ethereum.
• The Thiel Foundation, a private foundation funded by Paypal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
• A different anonymous Ethereum cryptocurrency investor in 2017.
• Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative
• Jaan Tallinn, Skype and Kazaa developer and co-founder of the existential risk institutes FLI and CSER.
• Jed McCaleb, developer of the Ripple and Stellar currency exchange systems.
• Loren Merritt, x264 video codec library developer.
• Edwin Evans, Cofounder of Linc Global.

For a list of donors who have given $5,000 or more and wanted to be acknowledged, see our Top Contributors page.