Almost all OpenPhil and FTXFF money was spent on people who advocated regulating rather than banning advanced AI, plus a few alignment groups accepting OpenPhil's view that alignment would be solvable in time.

Judge as of 2024-03-13 for AI-related grants (AI safety, governance and policy) made by Open Philanthropy and the FTX Future Fund. Classify each recipient's position using its public statements: advocating regulation (rather than a ban or halt of advanced AI), being an alignment group that holds alignment is solvable in time, or neither. 'Almost all' means at least about 90% of the dollars. True: at least about 90% of the AI-related dollars went to recipients in the two named categories, and the alignment groups receiving money were few. Mostly true: about 80–90%, or the split between the two categories differs in a minor way. Mixed: about 50–80%. Mostly false: there is a real tilt toward pro-regulation recipients, but under half of the dollars fit the description, or large amounts went to ban/pause advocates or to work with no stated position on regulation. False: little of the money fits the description, or a large share went to recipients advocating a ban.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 The “AI Existential Risk” Industrial Complex aipanic.news (publisher name not shown on page) · 10 January 2025

   “In 2023, CAIS proposed to ban open-source models trained beyond 10^23 FLOPs.”

2. E2 The “AI Existential Risk” Industrial Complex aipanic.news (publisher name not shown on page) · 10 January 2025

   “CAIS’s funding: $12,485,288 from Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy (Coefficient Giving).”

3. E3 An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation — LessWrong LessWrong · 12 July 2023 Own record

   “Since it was founded in 2017, Open Phil has donated about $2.8 billion of which about $336 million was spent on AI safety (~12%).”

4. E4 A genealogy of AI safety: how directions are born, and how they die (2005-2026) — LessWrong LessWrong (post by Elena Ericheva) · 1 February 2024 Own record

   “OpenPhil also grew thanks to itemized 2024 grants to CAIS, Redwood and MIRI of about $3.8 million, flagged as a subset of the donor total so as not to double-count.”

5. E5 A genealogy of AI safety: how directions are born, and how they die (2005-2026) — LessWrong LessWrong (post by Elena Ericheva) · 1 February 2024 Own record

   “The philanthropies are the oldest and largest block: OpenPhil at $176.77 million, SFF at $144.04 million, FLI at $39.01 million and FTX at $18.74 million”

6. E6 Our Progress in 2022 and Plans for 2023 — EA Forum EA Forum (Coefficient Giving / Open Philanthropy linkpost) · 12 May 2023

   “Center for a New American Security to support their work on AI policy and governance.”

7. E7 Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024 Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) · 20 November 2025

   “The FTX Future Fund, a large funder in several of our focus areas, including pandemic prevention and AI risks, collapsed suddenly and left a sizable funding gap in those areas.”

The evidence gives total AI-safety funding from Open Philanthropy and FTX (E3, E7), but no breakdown of where the money went by each recipient's stance on regulation versus a ban, or by their view on whether alignment can be solved in time. Some items mention individual recipients: CAIS received about $12.5M from Open Philanthropy and proposed banning open-source models above a compute threshold (E1, E2), Open Philanthropy funded CNAS for AI policy work (E8), and Open Philanthropy made grants to MIRI (E6). Apart from CAIS's proposal to ban certain open-source models [E1], the evidence does not state these recipients' positions on regulation versus a ban or on whether alignment can be solved in time. Without a dollar-weighted classification of recipients, the evidence cannot show whether about 90% of the AI-related money fits the claim.