Manifund与AI安全领域的专家合作，通过再授权的方式，向早期AI安全项目提供快速、小额的资金支持。2025年已筹集225万美元，并公布了首批10位再授权人。这种模式能够快速响应资金需求，支持高潜力的项目，并提供资金以外的支持，如指导和资源共享。Manifund的再授权计划旨在促进AI安全领域的创新和发展，为AI安全领域提供更灵活、更高效的资金支持。

💡 Manifund与AI安全领域的专家合作，向早期AI安全项目提供再授权资金，每个再授权人拥有10万美元以上的独立预算。

🤝 2025年已筹集225万美元，首批10位再授权人来自DeepMind、SL5 Task Force等机构，他们在各自领域内拥有专业知识和经验。

🚀 再授权模式的优势包括：快速拨款（一周内到账）、鼓励投机性资助、主动提供资金、支持超出资金范围（例如指导、引荐等）

🧐 好的再授权人应具备：对项目和人才的敏锐眼光、积极主动的资助能力、愿意与受助人建立关系并提供支持。

💰 对于捐赠者，再授权提供了一种简便的方式，支持AI安全领域有潜力的新项目，Manifund负责处理拨款的后勤工作，捐赠者可以信任专家，无需深入了解AI安全领域。

Published on April 22, 2025 5:36 PM GMT

Each year, Manifund partners with regrantors: experts in the field of AI safety, each given an independent budget of $100k+. Regrantors can initiate fast, small grants, seeding early-stage projects with $5k-$50k.

For 2025, we’ve raised $2.25m so far, and are excited to announce our first 10 regrantors:

Neel Nanda — DeepMindLisa Thiergart — SL5 Task ForceLauren Mangla — ConstellationAidan O'Gara — LongviewGavin Leech — ArbMarius Hobbhahn — ApolloThomas Larsen — AI Futures ProjectTamay Besiroglu — MechanizeRichard Ngo — IndependentJoel Becker — METR

We deeply respect what our regrantors have each accomplished in their fields, and are excited to see what they choose to fund!

Why does regranting matter?

Regranting fills a critical role in the AI safety funding ecosystem:

Fast, low-friction grants: when needed, we can go from “grant recommended” to “money in grantee’s bank account” in <1 week.Hits-based giving: regrantors can make grants solo, and are directly responsible for the quality of the grant. This encourages more speculative grants, and avoids problems in review-by-committee.Proactive funding, not reactive: regrantors can offer funding, knowing that they have the money to back their promises. Most other grant processes (OpenPhil, LTFF, SFF) are application-based.Support beyond money: regrantors form closer relationships with grantees, and can provide feedback, intros, mentorship, and publicity
Startups will often accept small angel checks for the prestige, connections & advice; regrantors can provide similar support to granteesIn contrast, OpenPhil program officers or LTFF fund managers are responsible for hundreds of grants and thus are often too busy to help
Efficient markets in grantmaking: regranting provides more influence (dollars as ”votes”) to AI safety experts with good track records
Similar to how tech startup exits create angel investors, who “vote” on the next batch of startups by funding themSimilar to how prediction markets provide more “votes” to good forecasters, becoming more accurate over timeRegranting budgets themselves are similar to retroactive funding for past good work!
Regranting is a decentralizing force, seeding new independent orgs, instead of concentrating talent within AI labs, or large charities with strong fundraising operationsOur regrants are transparent, with project descriptions and grant writeups in public
This provides a public track record and social proof for grantees, which helps them with future fundraising and hiring. For example, early public comments from regrantors Evan Hubinger and Ryan Kidd likely helped Timaeus raise more from SFF.Transparency also helps the community understand which kinds of work are respected and funded. Manifund regrants provide more detail per grant compared to every other AI safety grantmaker.
Regranting builds up the Manifund network, helping us meet great grantees
This gives us a picture of the landscape of AI safety,We can follow up with intros, referrals, funding down the lineMany of the 2025 regrantors started out as Manifund grantees from past regrants (eg Tamay Besiroglu from Epoch, Lisa Thiergart from MIRI, Marius Hobbhahn from Apollo)

What makes a good regrantor?

With regranting, the most important choice Manifund & our donors face is: “who gets these $100k+ budgets?” Here are some of the criteria we look for, when deciding who to invite:

Good taste in projects and people
Regranting is a similar skillset to angel investing. Good regrantors have a track record of being early and right; of finding undervalued opportunities.Regranting is also similar to hiring: both require identifying great talent. Standard advice for investing in startups is to focus on the founders, not the ideas — we think this holds true for regrants, too. “Fund people, not projects”.
Has capacity to regrant, proactively
That is, regrantors should not too busy to actually find, consider, and make grantsWilling to research potential grantees, reach out and form relationships, follow up with mentorship and supportRegrantors would ideally spend 5h+/month talking to grantees & writing up the grants
It helps if a regrantor’s day-to-day work already provides them with good leads and ideas, eg they are more of a manager than a researcher
Extends coverage of AI safety funding. One goal of regranting is to spot new opportunities — a wide net helps with this. Some kinds of coverage we think about:
Geographic coverage: Bay Area vs DC vs London vs ChinaSubject matter coverage: evals vs mech interp vs AI policy vs fieldbuildingDifferent kinds of orgs: labs vs thinktanks vs startups vs charitiesDifferent competing orgs: Anthropic vs GDM vs OpenAI
Doesn’t already have easy access to funding
People who are already grantmakers, or are well connected to and can recommend grants to philanthropists, might use regranting budgets less counterfactually. We mostly don’t invite existing grantmakers to regrant.There are exceptions though! It depends on specific circumstances. For example, Aidan O’Gara already makes grants at Longview, but we were still excited to have him regrant.
A Manifund regranting budget provides Aidan with more flexibility and risk appetite (can make regrants that Longview may be unwilling to publicly endorse), and is more lightweight (regrants are fast and can go out in small amounts, whereas Longview rarely considers grants of <$200k).
Grantmaking may be a skill that improves with practice, so budgets may go farther in the hands of experienced grantmakers

We’re still looking for more regrantors; consider applying here!

For regrantors: what makes a good regrant?

Good regrants are often local, small & fast:

A local grant is made within a regrantor’s unique network, without prior knowledge from OpenPhil or others — our donors aren’t excited to funge against OpenPhil dollars (neither are we!). At the same time, it’s important not to overthink this criterion. There are plenty of cases where OpenPhil sees an opportunity but can’t fund it due to e.g. reputational risk, and also cases where they may be lacking information or are just wrong about the value of a proposal.If the org receiving the grant isn’t small (raised $1M+), it probably already has a public track record and a fundraising team, and should therefore be on the radar for OpenPhil and others. As an example, Evan Hubinger’s grant to MATS itself is less exciting to us than grants to his own MATS mentees, who have less funding and less visibility.One strength of regranting is that it can be fast, i.e., time sensitive grants, as Manifund can move dollars to grantees within days of the recommendation. Types of funding that might fit into this category include funding for compute or travel expenses, or bringing on world-class talent, ASAP. On the other hand, yearly planning for orgs is better captured by OpenPhil and SFF, who move more slowly but have a lot more money available.

Some examples of regrants that we particularly liked (full review coming soon!):

Scoping Developmental Interpretability by Jesse Hoogland - the first funding for Timaeus, accelerating its research by monthsSupport for deep coverage of China and AI to ChinaTalk - reporting on DeepSeek, ahead of the curveShallow review of AI safety 2024 to Gavin Leech - quick regrants inducing further funding from OpenPhil & others

Ultimately, regrantors have a lot of discretion for making grants, and we encourage you to use it! We expect many great regrants to come not just from looking at new proposals as they appear on the Manifund website, but from proactively finding them. This could look like asking your friends or colleagues for leads, launching a request for proposals, or a prize contest.

See also “Some fun lessons I learned as a junior regrantor” from Joel Becker.

For donors: why fund regrantors?

If you’re looking for a turnkey way to seed great AI safety projects, consider funding our regranting program! We think it’s a good fit for donors who are:

Earning to give, and donating $50k+ a yearConcerned about AI safety, but less familiar with the landscape, and not interested in spending a lot of your time getting up to speedExcited to back new, undiscovered opportunities

For such donors, regranting provides a “part-time program officer, as a service”. It’s often hard to find great AI safety program officers because their opportunity costs are high; those with the appropriate context could just do direct work. But regranting doesn’t take an expert away from their day job. Instead, they can keep an eye out for good opportunities, while continuing to work in the field.

So rather than spinning up your own foundation, with the overhead that imposes, you can tap into the expertise of someone you trust — and have Manifund handle the logistics of sending out grants. We do ask large donors to contribute an extra 5% towards Manifund’s operational budget; in exchange, Manifund works closely with each donor to understand your giving objectives.

We’re quite flexible with how to distribute budgets:

You can fund the regrantor program as a whole, allowing Manifund to allocate the budgetYou can increase the budgets for specific regrantors you trustYou can nominate your own regrantors to join the program

If you’re interested in donating via regranting, please reach out to u>austin@manifund.org</u!

Thanks to Jesse Richardson and Leila Clark for input~

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