Survival and Flourishing Fund

The Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) is a philanthropic platform founded in 2019 that organizes the collection and evaluation of grant applications to direct funding toward organizations working on the long-term survival and flourishing of sentient life. It was created when the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI) decided to hand off Jaan Tallinn's grantmaking so BERI could focus on its core mission, with Andrew Critch overseeing the transition. Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, is the primary funder and plays a central role in all funding decisions. SFF operates as a virtual fund: it does not itself hold or disburse money, but instead produces recommendations that participating funders — primarily Jaan Tallinn through Survival and Flourishing Corp (SFC), a Public Benefit Corporation — then choose to implement. The actual grantmaking entity is SFC. SFF has also partnered with other funders including Jed McCaleb, David Marble's Casey and Family Foundation, Blake Borgeson, and the Future of Life Institute (FLI) for specific rounds. SFF's core innovation is the S-Process, a grant-recommendation algorithm and structured meeting procedure co-developed by Andrew Critch, Jaan Tallinn, Oliver Habryka, Kevin Arlin, and Jason Moggridge. Each grant round assembles a panel of 4–12 Recommenders who work collaboratively through a simulation app to produce grant recommendations across multiple tracks. In 2025, SFF ran a single round with three tracks — Main, Fairness, and Freedom — and twelve total Recommenders. SFF also offers Speculation Grants, an expedited rolling application process for smaller or quicker-turnaround projects, and an Initiative Committee that proactively reaches out to fund work without requiring formal applications. Since its first grant round in Q3 2019, SFF has organized approximately $152 million in philanthropic gifts. Annual disbursements have grown substantially: from under $2 million in 2019, to approximately $35 million in 2025, with $20–40 million projected for 2026. The 2025 round funded 89 organizations totaling $34.33 million, with 86% going to AI safety ($29.4 million), 7% to biosecurity ($2.6 million), and the remainder to other global catastrophic risk areas. In 2024, the Initiative Committee alone distributed approximately $16 million across 27 grants. In 2026, SFF expanded its scope by adding three themed grant rounds alongside the Main Round, targeting Climate Change, Animal Welfare, and Human Self-Enhancement and Empowerment (HSEE), with an application deadline of April 22, 2026 for the main tracks. SFF also entered a new Application-Sharing Agreement with the Effective Institutions Project (EIP) to broaden funding access. SFC is a distributed team of approximately 11 core staff based across the US, with key advisors Andrew Critch (also President of BERI and CEO of HealthcareAgents) and Eric Rogstad serving on the Initiative Committee alongside Jaan Tallinn.