# Cari Tuna

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/cari_tuna
> Updated: 2026-06-27
> Categories: AI Safety, People
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

Cari Tuna (born October 4, 1985) is an American philanthropist and former Wall Street Journal reporter who, with her husband [Dustin Moskovitz](/wiki/dustin_moskovitz), co-founder of Facebook and Asana, founded the philanthropic foundation Good Ventures in 2011 and serves as president and chair of [Open Philanthropy](/wiki/open_philanthropy), the grantmaking and research organization that rebranded as Coefficient Giving in November 2025. Through these vehicles, Tuna and Moskovitz have given away more than $5 billion since 2011 to causes including global health, scientific research, biosecurity, farm animal welfare, and [AI safety](/wiki/ai_safety), making them among the largest private funders of technical AI safety research in the world. [1][7][16] A central figure in the [effective altruism](/wiki/effective_altruism) movement, Tuna was named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024 and, with Moskovitz, to the inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy list in 2025. [11][12]

"There isn't one right answer about how to do the most good," Tuna has said. "And yet, I think it's so important to grapple with the question of how can we have an outsized impact with our giving." [13][14]

## Infobox

| | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 4, 1985 |
| Alma mater | Yale University (B.A., 2008) |
| Occupation | Philanthropist; former journalist |
| Spouse | Dustin Moskovitz (m. 2013) |
| Known for | Co-founder of Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy; major funder of AI safety research |
| Title | Chair, Good Ventures; Chair, Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) |

## Who is Cari Tuna?

Cari Tuna is the philanthropist who, with Dustin Moskovitz, runs one of the largest data-driven private giving operations in the United States. After three years as a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal, she left journalism in 2011, at age 25, to direct the couple's giving full time, and she has since become the principal decision-maker behind Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy (renamed Coefficient Giving in 2025). [1][6][9] As of 2025 the couple have given away more than $5 billion, with a stated goal of donating roughly $20 billion, essentially their entire fortune, during their lifetimes rather than building a perpetual endowment. [7][17]

## Early life and education

Tuna was born on October 4, 1985, in Minnesota and grew up in Evansville, Indiana. Both of her parents are physicians. She attended Signature School in Evansville, where she served as student council president, founded the school's Amnesty International chapter, and was co-valedictorian of her class. [1][10]

She enrolled at Yale University and graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. While at Yale she wrote for the student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, and held journalism internships at the Evansville Courier & Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She also studied basic Arabic and Turkish during her undergraduate years, an unusual combination for a future tech reporter. [1][10]

The Indiana background is worth pausing on, because almost everything else about her life eventually unfolds in the Bay Area. She was not a finance kid, not a Stanford computer science major, and not someone who arrived in tech with a venture mindset. She came in as a journalist, which probably explains the careful research culture she later helped build at Good Ventures.

## What was her Wall Street Journal career?

From June 2008 to April 2011, Tuna worked as a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, based in the paper's San Francisco bureau. [1][10] Her beats covered enterprise technology, the California economy, and corporate management. She wrote on topics ranging from Silicon Valley start-ups and IT spending to the financial impact of California ballot measures and the depletion of available IPv4 internet addresses.

In April 2011, after roughly three years at the paper, Tuna left journalism to focus full time on philanthropy with Moskovitz. She was 25 years old. [1][9] Quitting a Wall Street Journal byline at that age is the kind of decision people usually only make when something more interesting has shown up, and in her case that something was a several-billion-dollar question about how to give money away well.

## How is she connected to Dustin Moskovitz?

Tuna met Dustin Moskovitz on a blind date in 2009. [1][9] Moskovitz had co-founded [Facebook](/wiki/facebook) with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes in 2004 while a student at Harvard, and had left the company in 2008 to co-found the work management software firm Asana with Justin Rosenstein. They married in 2013. [1]

Moskovitz's stake in Facebook (later Meta), combined with his ownership of Asana, has been the source of essentially all of the couple's philanthropic capital. Forbes has at various points listed him as one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world, with a fortune of roughly $10 billion as of 2025, alongside a further $10 billion placed into the Good Ventures foundation. [17] Tuna and Moskovitz have made a deliberate choice to live well below the standard of comparable Silicon Valley wealth and to direct the bulk of their net worth into their grantmaking organizations during their lifetimes, rather than building a perpetual endowment. [9][17]

## Founding Good Ventures (2011)

Tuna and Moskovitz founded Good Ventures in 2011 as the legal vehicle for their philanthropic giving, with a stated mission to "improve as many lives as possible, as much as possible." [7][8] The foundation is structured to spend down the couple's wealth during their lifetimes rather than operate in perpetuity.

The origin story has become a small piece of effective altruism folklore. Early in their relationship, Tuna and Moskovitz read Peter Singer's book The Life You Can Save and started looking for charity research that took cost-effectiveness seriously. That led them to GiveWell, the charity evaluator [Holden Karnofsky](/wiki/holden_karnofsky) had co-founded with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007. An early meeting with Karnofsky, in which he explained how cheaply iodized salt could prevent intellectual disability caused by iodine deficiency, persuaded the couple that there were many overlooked, neglected, and tractable problems in the world that more careful research could surface. [1][9]

In April 2011, Tuna joined the board of [GiveWell](/wiki/givewell). [1] Five months later, GiveWell launched a new initiative called GiveWell Labs to investigate giving opportunities outside its existing recommendations for global poverty charities. GiveWell Labs would later be renamed the Open Philanthropy Project, and then simply Open Philanthropy, before its 2025 rebrand to Coefficient Giving. [2][3]

Good Ventures itself has no full-time program staff. It functions as the bank account, with grant decisions on its non-GiveWell giving mostly delegated to Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving. The arrangement lets Tuna and Moskovitz outsource the heavy lifting of due diligence to a research team without managing a large foundation bureaucracy of their own.

## What is Open Philanthropy?

Open Philanthropy is the grantmaking and research organization, co-founded by Tuna, that decides where most of Good Ventures' money goes and that advises other large donors on how to maximize the impact of their giving. [1][6] It favors a data-centric approach, directing dollars to causes judged by importance, neglectedness, and tractability, and as of 2025 it has directed more than $4 billion in grants across global health, scientific research, biosecurity, farm animal welfare, AI safety, and the effective altruism community. [13][16]

### Partnership with GiveWell

Open Philanthropy began in 2011 as GiveWell Labs, an experimental project housed inside GiveWell that asked the question: if you wanted to give away large sums of money to the highest-impact causes you could find, where would you give? The original GiveWell ranked charities in already well-defined categories such as direct cash transfers and malaria prevention. The new project would venture into less mapped territory, including scientific research, criminal justice reform, immigration policy, biosecurity, and the long-term risks from advanced artificial intelligence. [1][9]

In August 2014, GiveWell Labs was renamed the Open Philanthropy Project. It continued to operate as a joint venture between GiveWell and Good Ventures, with Tuna serving as president and Karnofsky as executive director. [1] Tuna also signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge along with Moskovitz in 2010, becoming the youngest individual signer at the time and, with her husband, the youngest couple to do so. [1][6]

### When did Open Philanthropy separate from GiveWell?

In June 2017, Open Philanthropy formally separated from GiveWell and incorporated as an independent organization. [1] The split reflected how different the two operations had become: GiveWell focused on a small number of well-evidenced global health charities recommended to a broad audience of individual donors, while Open Philanthropy concentrated on large grants from a single principal funder (Good Ventures) into much more speculative cause areas. The two organizations remained close, with overlapping board members and shared intellectual roots in effective altruism, but they ran on different staffs, budgets, and decision-making processes after 2017.

### Why did Open Philanthropy rename to Coefficient Giving?

On November 18, 2025, Open Philanthropy rebranded as Coefficient Giving. [4][14] The change reflected the organization's expanded role advising philanthropists beyond Good Ventures, with the group now operating 13 cause-specific funds open to multiple donors rather than serving primarily one anchor funder. [13][14] Open Philanthropy directed more than $100 million from non-Good-Ventures donors in 2024, and the organization said it had more than doubled that figure in 2025. [13][16] The new name was chosen to nod to both "co" (collaboration with other donors and grantees) and "efficient" (the organization's emphasis on cost-effectiveness in grantmaking). [5] Tuna remained chair under the new name, with Alexander Berger as chief executive. [4][14]

Tuna framed the shift as the realization of a long-held goal: "It's always been a vision of mine to create a resource that could support not just Dustin and me, but many donors looking for advice on how to do as much good as they can with their giving." [13][14]

### Funding focus areas

Coefficient Giving / Open Philanthropy operates across a broad portfolio. The major program areas the organization has funded include the following. [7]

| Focus area | Description |
|---|---|
| Global health and development | Direct giving to programs serving people in low-income countries, including malaria prevention, vitamin A supplementation, and lead exposure reduction |
| Scientific research | Basic and applied biomedical research, including immunology, neuroscience, and tools for life sciences |
| Farm animal welfare | Corporate cage-free campaigns, alternative protein research, and welfare reform advocacy |
| Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness | Reducing risks from naturally occurring and engineered pandemics, including better diagnostics and PPE stockpiles |
| Navigating transformative AI | Technical AI safety research, AI policy and governance, and field-building grants |
| Innovation policy / abundance and growth | Research and advocacy aimed at accelerating broad-based economic growth |
| U.S. policy (historic) | Earlier work on criminal justice reform, land use reform, and immigration policy |

As of 2025, Coefficient Giving has directed more than $4 billion across these areas, with Good Ventures distributing more than $5 billion in total grants since 2011 (a figure that includes both GiveWell-recommended giving and Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving recommendations). [7][13][16]

## The Giving Pledge

In 2010, Tuna and Moskovitz signed The Giving Pledge, the campaign launched by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett to encourage the world's wealthiest people to commit the majority of their fortunes to charitable causes. [1][6] Tuna was 24 at the time. The couple were the youngest signatories of the pledge when they joined.

In their pledge letter, Tuna and Moskovitz wrote about wanting to take "the fullest possible advantage of the opportunity we have to help others." [1] That phrasing, with its emphasis on opportunity rather than obligation, has become a recurring theme in how the couple frame their philanthropy publicly.

## Notable grants and impact

Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving have funded thousands of grants since 2011. A few have drawn particular attention.

| Year | Grant | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $30 million to OpenAI | Made when [OpenAI](/wiki/openai) was still a relatively obscure non-profit research lab; one of the earliest large institutional bets on AI safety research, and the grant that secured Holden Karnofsky a seat on OpenAI's board [1] |
| 2014 onwards | Multi-year support for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Future of Humanity Institute | Foundational support for the early AI alignment research field |
| 2017 onwards | Support for the Centre for the Governance of AI and various AI policy think tanks | Building a research community around AI governance |
| Ongoing | GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, Helen Keller International | Standard GiveWell top-charity giving via Good Ventures |
| Ongoing | Lead Exposure Elimination Project | One of Open Philanthropy's signature global health and wellbeing bets |
| 2014, 2018 | Major grants to criminal justice reform groups in the United States | Including funding for the Alliance for Safety and Justice and bail reform research |
| Ongoing | Funding for the Good Food Institute, Mercy For Animals, The Humane League | Farm animal welfare and alternative protein development |

The Open Philanthropy approach to grantmaking is unusual in that it publishes detailed research write-ups, grant rationales, and post-grant evaluations on its website, including for grants that did not work out as hoped. That transparency has been influential among other large philanthropic funders.

## How much has she funded AI safety?

For AI Wiki readers, Tuna's most consequential decisions have probably been in artificial intelligence. Open Philanthropy was the first major institutional philanthropy to treat existential and catastrophic risks from advanced AI as a serious cause area, beginning around 2015. [12] By the early 2020s, the organization had become one of the largest non-government funders of technical AI safety research and AI policy work in the world.

Reporting placed Open Philanthropy's cumulative AI grantmaking at roughly $400 million as of April 2024, rising to more than $580 million by November 2025 as the program expanded. [12][14] Recipients have included MIRI, the Future of Humanity Institute (before its closure in 2024), the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, the Alignment Research Center, Redwood Research, the Centre for the Governance of AI, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown, METR, Apollo Research, and many smaller research groups and individual researchers.

The 2017 OpenAI grant of $30 million is the most discussed of these. [1] It came at a moment when OpenAI was a small, obscure non-profit research outfit, years before ChatGPT, and it has been argued about ever since: it secured Holden Karnofsky a board seat at OpenAI for several years and tied Open Philanthropy's reputation to OpenAI's later trajectory in ways that became uncomfortable when the organization shifted toward commercial deployment. (Karnofsky later stepped down from the board, citing a conflict of interest after his wife, Daniela Amodei, helped start Anthropic.) Tuna has been candid in interviews that not every grant in this portfolio has worked, and that the AI field has moved faster and stranger than the foundation expected when it began funding the area.

In mid-2024, Tuna took on direct oversight of the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness program, and shortly after added oversight of the AI work, while continuing to oversee Science and Global Health R&D. [15][16] That puts her personally in the chain of approval for the largest single category of AI safety philanthropy in the world.

## How is she connected to effective altruism?

Tuna's role in the effective altruism movement is structural rather than rhetorical. She rarely gives keynote speeches or writes EA blog posts. What she does is sign the cheques, and Good Ventures money has been a core part of the budgets of many of the movement's most prominent organizations: 80,000 Hours, the Centre for Effective Altruism, GiveWell itself, the Open Philanthropy Project, and many EA-aligned research groups. [1][10]

Her case for the rigorous, cause-neutral style of giving is blunt. If all major donors instead gave from personal passion alone, Tuna has argued, "Philanthropy will be missing some of the biggest opportunities to help others, especially the most disadvantaged people." [13]

This financial centrality has had upsides and downsides. On one hand, Tuna and Moskovitz's willingness to underwrite long-shot, weird, and unfashionable research questions has made it possible for entire fields (early AI safety, farm animal welfare, biosecurity) to grow far faster than they would have on grant funding alone. On the other hand, the extent of Good Ventures' market share has provoked recurring debates within EA about funding concentration, dependence on a single donor's priorities, and the resilience of the movement if Good Ventures ever pulled back.

Following the collapse of the FTX-funded Future Fund in late 2022, those questions became more acute. Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving became the dominant funder for many EA cause areas almost overnight, particularly in AI safety, where FTX's Future Fund had been promising large grants that never materialized.

## 2023 to 2024 reorganization

In 2023 and 2024, Open Philanthropy went through a leadership restructuring. Alexander Berger became sole chief executive. Emily Oehlsen was promoted to managing director and assumed oversight of the Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio that Tuna had previously overseen. Tuna's title shifted from president to chair. [15][16]

Described at the time as a return to closer involvement rather than a step back, the change had Tuna working more directly with Moskovitz on long-range strategy and program oversight while letting the Berger and Oehlsen team run day-to-day operations. By mid-2024 she had taken on direct oversight of biosecurity, and shortly afterward of the AI portfolio, while keeping Science and Global Health R&D under her purview. The overall message was that Tuna remained the principal decision-maker on major grant directions, but at a less operational level than before.

## Personal life

Tuna and Moskovitz live in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are notoriously low-profile for billionaires, giving few interviews, declining most photographs, and avoiding the standard Silicon Valley celebrity circuit. Public reporting on their personal life is sparse. [1][9]

Tuna has been described in profiles as the family member who runs the philanthropic operation day to day, with Moskovitz focused primarily on Asana and on long-term strategy at Good Ventures. [9] The couple has not publicly discussed children or other personal matters in any detail. They have made political donations to Democratic candidates and progressive causes; in the 2016 election cycle, Tuna gave roughly $7.9 million to Democratic-aligned organizations, including the League of Conservation Voters and the For Our Future Action Fund. [10]

In 2024, TIME magazine named Tuna to its 100 Most Influential People in AI list, citing her role as one of the largest funders of AI safety research. [12] In 2025, she and Moskovitz were named to the inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy list for their data-centric approach to giving. [11]

## ELI5: Who is Cari Tuna?

Imagine someone who used to write newspaper stories, then married one of the people who helped build Facebook. Together they ended up with a giant pile of money, billions of dollars. Instead of buying yachts, Cari Tuna decided to spend her time figuring out how to give almost all of it away in the way that helps the most people. She and her husband started two organizations, Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy, that carefully research where each dollar does the most good, whether that is buying medicine for sick children, improving how farm animals are treated, or paying scientists to make sure powerful AI stays safe. They have already given away more than $5 billion, and they plan to give away almost everything they have.

## See also

- [Open Philanthropy](/wiki/open_philanthropy)
- [Dustin Moskovitz](/wiki/dustin_moskovitz)
- [Holden Karnofsky](/wiki/holden_karnofsky)
- [GiveWell](/wiki/givewell)
- [Effective altruism](/wiki/effective_altruism)
- [AI safety](/wiki/ai_safety)
- [OpenAI](/wiki/openai)

## References

1. "Cari Tuna," Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
2. "Good Ventures," Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
3. "Coefficient Giving," Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
4. "Open Philanthropy Is Now Coefficient Giving," Coefficient Giving, November 18, 2025.
5. "The Story Behind Our New Name," Coefficient Giving, 2025.
6. "Cari Tuna," Coefficient Giving team page, openphilanthropy.org/about/team/cari-tuna.
7. "Our Story" and "About Us," Good Ventures, goodventures.org.
8. "Home," Good Ventures, goodventures.org/about-us.
9. "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy," The Washington Post, December 26, 2014.
10. "Cari Tuna," InfluenceWatch, accessed 2026.
11. "TIME100 Philanthropy 2025: Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz," TIME, 2025.
12. "Cari Tuna: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2024," TIME, April 2024.
13. "Open Philanthropy Is Now Coefficient Giving. Here's What Has (and Hasn't) Changed," Inside Philanthropy, 2025.
14. "Billionaire Cari Tuna on why the organization she started will offer free advice to other donors," Associated Press, November 18, 2025.
15. "Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024," Open Philanthropy, 2024.
16. "Our Progress in 2024 and Plans for 2025," Coefficient Giving, 2025.
17. "Meet the millennial Meta cofounder and his wife who are giving away $20 billion," Fortune, November 10, 2025.