Status: Posted!

What is regranting?

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 our 2025 program, we’ve raised $2.25m from donors to distribute to these regrantors:

Meet our 2025 regrantors

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2025 Regrantors

Why Manifund is excited for regranting

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

• Fast, low-friction grants: when needed, we can go from “grant recommendation submitted” to “money in grantee 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 grantees
  • In 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 them
  • Similar to how prediction markets provide more “votes” to good forecasters, becoming more accurate over time
  • Regranting 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 operations
• Our 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 line
  • Many 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: