Lightcone Commons’ first funding round is complete! 17 evaluators made funding recommendations, including Zvi Mowshowitz, Scott Siskind and Eliezer Yudkowsky. 23 funders coordinated to grant $45.1M, and 147 projects received funding.
Round two is open. Applications for round two close on November 15th and funders confirm their grants by December 14th. Funders can join anytime before December 7th.
In 2027, we will be hosting funding rounds monthly. Yes. Every month.
You can join as a funder, express interest in joining as an evaluator, and apply for funding at lightconecommons.com.
Lightcone Commons staff do not decide what grants get made.[1] Pls stop saying that "Lightcone Commons funded us", that's a bit like saying "PayPal funded me".
Lightcone Commons is an end-to-end philanthropic coordination platform.
We host an open funding application, and invite evaluators to make ordered funding recommendations. Participating funders then decide how much they want to give, and to whom – either by following the recommendations of evaluators or choosing specific projects to fund. When multiple funders want to fund the same project they ‘split the bill’.
Lightcone Commons is not a foundation. We don’t decide to make specific grants. Funders decide what grants to make, aided by evaluators. Lightcone Commons provides the infrastructure for this to happen. We are worried that people will mistakenly understand Lightcone Commons to be a foundation, and say things like ‘I wonder why Lightcone Commons decided to fund X’. This would be sad because Lightcone Commons is not a foundation, and we didn’t decide to fund X. Nor did we decide not to fund X. The funders did (with help from the evaluators).
(Lightcone Commons is not a foundation.)
Round One Overview
Funders
Participating funders included: Agus Covarrubias, AI Risk Mitigation Fund, Andreas Stuhlmueller, Cormac Slade Byrd, Craig Falls, Daniel Kokotajlo, David Farhi, Dustin Moskovitz, Jaan Tallinn, James & Joanna Bregan, Jess Riedel, John Williams, Long Term Future Fund, Matt Putz, Michael Gao, Nate Soares, Nisan Stiennon, Peter McCluskey, Ricson Cheng, Timothy Telleen-Lawton and three anonymous funders.
Funders split the bill on most grants – 79% of the grants were paid by more than one funder. The median grant had four funders, and there were 17 funders behind the most-shared grant.
Evaluators
Each evaluator submitted a funding order (an ordered list of what they would fund) for the round. You can see the evaluators and their funding orders in the following gothic-chic widget.
Of the $45.1M total granted, $41.2M was routed through evaluators. Evaluators are paid 2% of the amount that flows through them[2], and in total evaluators received $693k.
On average each funder chose to fund four evaluators’ funding orders, and 61% of funders used four or more.
You can apply for funding any time before the close of applications. You can also apply after the close of applications, in which case you will be considered for funding in the next funding round in January. We accept international applications as well as applications from 501c3s, 501c4s, for-profit organizations and individuals.
Ought are also sponsoring an epistemics fund on Lightcone Commons, so if you have projects related to better thinking, whether thats fact checking, forecasting or something else, you can check out their site here. All projects that apply there will be eligible for the funding via the standard evaluators and funders too.
If you are interested in joining as a funder, you can book a call with me, or email habryka@lightconeinfrastructure.com. You can join at any time, with the deadline for participating in round two being December 7th.
We are also looking for more evaluators for Lightcone Commons, especially people who have good funding recommendations in worldviews not already represented on the platform. You can express interest in becoming an evaluator here.
Tl;dr:
Lightcone Commons’ first funding round is complete! 17 evaluators made funding recommendations, including Zvi Mowshowitz, Scott Siskind and Eliezer Yudkowsky. 23 funders coordinated to grant $45.1M, and 147 projects received funding.
Round two is open. Applications for round two close on November 15th and funders confirm their grants by December 14th. Funders can join anytime before December 7th.
In 2027, we will be hosting funding rounds monthly. Yes. Every month.
You can join as a funder, express interest in joining as an evaluator, and apply for funding at lightconecommons.com.
Lightcone Commons staff do not decide what grants get made.[1] Pls stop saying that "Lightcone Commons funded us", that's a bit like saying "PayPal funded me".
Lightcone Commons is an end-to-end philanthropic coordination platform.
We host an open funding application, and invite evaluators to make ordered funding recommendations. Participating funders then decide how much they want to give, and to whom – either by following the recommendations of evaluators or choosing specific projects to fund. When multiple funders want to fund the same project they ‘split the bill’.
Lightcone Commons is not a foundation. We don’t decide to make specific grants. Funders decide what grants to make, aided by evaluators. Lightcone Commons provides the infrastructure for this to happen. We are worried that people will mistakenly understand Lightcone Commons to be a foundation, and say things like ‘I wonder why Lightcone Commons decided to fund X’. This would be sad because Lightcone Commons is not a foundation, and we didn’t decide to fund X. Nor did we decide not to fund X. The funders did (with help from the evaluators).
(Lightcone Commons is not a foundation.)
Round One Overview
Funders
Participating funders included: Agus Covarrubias, AI Risk Mitigation Fund, Andreas Stuhlmueller, Cormac Slade Byrd, Craig Falls, Daniel Kokotajlo, David Farhi, Dustin Moskovitz, Jaan Tallinn, James & Joanna Bregan, Jess Riedel, John Williams, Long Term Future Fund, Matt Putz, Michael Gao, Nate Soares, Nisan Stiennon, Peter McCluskey, Ricson Cheng, Timothy Telleen-Lawton and three anonymous funders.
Funders split the bill on most grants – 79% of the grants were paid by more than one funder. The median grant had four funders, and there were 17 funders behind the most-shared grant.
Evaluators
Each evaluator submitted a funding order (an ordered list of what they would fund) for the round. You can see the evaluators and their funding orders in the following gothic-chic widget.
Of the $45.1M total granted, $41.2M was routed through evaluators. Evaluators are paid 2% of the amount that flows through them[2], and in total evaluators received $693k.
On average each funder chose to fund four evaluators’ funding orders, and 61% of funders used four or more.
Next Round
Round two is open! The relevant dates:
You can apply for funding any time before the close of applications. You can also apply after the close of applications, in which case you will be considered for funding in the next funding round in January. We accept international applications as well as applications from 501c3s, 501c4s, for-profit organizations and individuals.
Ought are also sponsoring an epistemics fund on Lightcone Commons, so if you have projects related to better thinking, whether thats fact checking, forecasting or something else, you can check out their site here. All projects that apply there will be eligible for the funding via the standard evaluators and funders too.
If you are interested in joining as a funder, you can book a call with me, or email habryka@lightconeinfrastructure.com. You can join at any time, with the deadline for participating in round two being December 7th.
We are also looking for more evaluators for Lightcone Commons, especially people who have good funding recommendations in worldviews not already represented on the platform. You can express interest in becoming an evaluator here.
Some Lightcone staff are also active as evaluators on the platform, but ultimately what gets funded is up to the funders
Evaluators can waive their fees as e.g. the fund managers of the Long-Term Future Fund did.
Though based on this round, most funders expect to send us the funds much faster than that