John SchulmanFounding member (OpenAI)
Grantmaker · Funders
The OpenAI Foundation is a U.S.-based charitable grantmaking institution created to ensure that “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” spanning both scientific upside and societal preparation for advanced AI. The Foundation describes its mission as addressing both how AI can accelerate solutions to society’s hardest problems and how to prepare for the challenges advanced AI brings.
Under its initial operating model, the Foundation organizes its grantmaking and programs across three priority areas: (1) Life Sciences and Curing Diseases, (2) AI Resilience, and (3) Civil Society and Philanthropy. The Foundation’s public program announcements show a mix of “direct work” and grants/partnerships intended to build or unlock public-interest infrastructure (e.g., public scientific datasets), strengthen community capacity to adopt AI, and fund technical and policy-relevant work intended to mitigate risks and maximize benefits as capabilities advance. Institutionally, the Foundation is the mission-governing nonprofit behind OpenAI’s broader corporate structure: OpenAI’s October 28, 2025 recapitalization describes the nonprofit as now being the OpenAI Foundation, which continues to control OpenAI Group (the for-profit public benefit corporation) via governance rights.
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The Foundation announced it is joining a coalition commitment with the Gates Foundation to ensure AI works across the world’s languages, describing planned focus on low-resource language model performance and voice AI data/infrastructure gaps.
Public Data for HealthThe Foundation launched its Public Data for Health program to fund the creation and preservation of open, high-quality scientific datasets intended to accelerate life-sciences research; the announcement describes “more than $125 million in initial grants.”
AI forecasting for smallholder farmersThe Foundation announced a $60 million investment portfolio to deliver AI-powered weather and crop disease forecasts to smallholder farmers over three years, aiming to reach 100 million farmers.
Paul Christiano joins OpenAI Foundation BoardThe Foundation announced Paul Christiano’s appointment to the OpenAI Foundation Board and stated he will join the Safety and Security Committee (SSC) of the Foundation Board.
Come build the OpenAI FoundationThe Foundation posted a recruiting announcement describing its mission and current hiring needs and pointing to the careers page and open roles.
AI for Civil Society and PhilanthropyThe Foundation launched the AI for Civil Society and Philanthropy program area and described a $100 million commitment to the Common Health Coalition to support B2F (Breakthroughs to Follow-Through).