Because the foundation holds a 26% equity stake in OpenAI, it is now be on track to become the richest charitable organization on the planet, potentially sitting on $250 billion in stock value. (By comparison, the Gates Foundation and a trust associated with it held about $180 billion at the end of 2025.)
Making good use of that kind of money will not be easy. The foundation, based in San Francisco, is still hiring for many key roles and only started ramping up its grantmaking this year. Its largest single gift so far, of $100 million, was awarded in August to the Common Health Coalition, an organization that helps patients get access to hepatitis C drugs.
OpenAI’s charitable efforts come even as apocalyptic fears have broken out about the possibility that runaway AI could wipe out all human life.
Those fears, which include the possibility of a deadly bioweapon, have been stoked by AI company insiders, some of whom say the chance of human extinction is 10% or more within the next decade. Last week, Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk both endorsed a call by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models” so that risk prevention can catch up.
Jacob Trefethen, an executive at the foundation, says it essentially operates separately from OpenAI, but shares an official mission of ensuring that artificial intelligence “benefits all of humanity.”
“We’re starting grantmaking when we think the best way to achieve that mission is to make grants to external non-profits, research institutions, and other third parties,” Trefethen said in an interview. He says the foundation hopes to give away $1 billion by the end of the year.
The $500,000 grant to 1Day Sooner will help the group prove it can obtain the data troves of bankrupt companies, says organization’s president and co-founder Josh Morrison. He thinks non-exclusive copies of company datasets could be acquired for only “a few tens of thousands of dollars” each.