A philanthropic platform and 501(c)(3) nonprofit that facilitates regranting, impact certificates, and crowdfunding for charitable projects, with a primary focus on AI safety and effective altruism cause areas.
A philanthropic platform and 501(c)(3) nonprofit that facilitates regranting, impact certificates, and crowdfunding for charitable projects, with a primary focus on AI safety and effective altruism cause areas.
People– no linked people
Updated 04/02/26Funding Details
Updated 04/02/26- Annual Budget
- $3,409,668
- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
- -
- Funding Raised to Date
- $7,756,209
Org Details
Updated 04/02/26Manifund is a philanthropic platform and grantmaking organization operated by Manifold for Charity, a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Founded in 2022 and launched in early 2023, Manifund was created by Austin Chen, co-founder of the prediction market platform Manifold Markets, along with Rachel Shu. The organization is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Manifund's core innovation is its regranting model, which partners with expert regrantors in the AI safety field, each given an independent budget of $100,000 or more. Regrantors can initiate fast, small grants (typically $5,000 to $50,000), seeding early-stage projects with funding that moves from recommendation to disbursement in under one week. This low-friction approach fills a critical gap in the AI safety funding ecosystem by enabling more speculative, hits-based giving without the delays of traditional committee-based grantmaking. In addition to regranting, Manifund pioneered the use of impact certificates for charitable projects, enabling retroactive funding of completed work. The platform also hosts an open call for applications where anyone can post a public grant proposal for regrantors and the general public to fund directly. Manifund's primary cause areas include technical AI safety, AI governance, biosecurity, forecasting, and effective altruism meta-work. In 2023, the platform allocated approximately $2 million across 88 projects, with technical AI safety receiving the largest share ($1.57 million across 27 projects). For 2025, the organization announced 10 AI safety regrantors with $2.25 million raised for distribution. Beyond grantmaking, Manifund operates Mox, a 20,000 square foot coworking and events space in San Francisco that has become the largest AI safety community space in the city. Mox hosts fellowships, accelerators, and community events for the AI safety and effective altruism communities. Manifund also co-hosts Manifest, an annual festival for forecasting and prediction markets held in Berkeley, California. The organization is governed by a board consisting of Austin Chen, Barak Gila, and Vishal Maini. The core Manifund team is small, with Austin Chen serving as CEO and Rachel Shu directing the Mox space. According to IRS 990 filings, the organization reported total revenue of $4.2 million and total expenses of $3.4 million in fiscal year 2024, with $3.1 million going directly to grants to organizations.
Theory of Change
Updated 04/02/26Manifund believes that the AI safety funding ecosystem has critical gaps: traditional grantmaking is too slow, too committee-driven, and too risk-averse to fund the most promising early-stage work. By empowering individual expert regrantors with independent budgets and minimal bureaucratic overhead, Manifund enables fast, speculative grants that seed new projects and researchers before they have the track record required by larger funders. This hits-based approach, combined with full transparency (all grants, amounts, and regrantor rationales are public), creates a funding pipeline that can identify and support high-impact AI safety work at its earliest stages. Impact certificates further incentivize high-quality work by enabling retroactive funding, while the Mox coworking space builds community infrastructure that concentrates and connects AI safety researchers and organizations in San Francisco.
Grants Received
Updated 04/02/26Projects– no linked projects
Updated 04/02/26Discussion
Key risk: Counterfactual impact hinges on the quality of regrantor selection and Mox’s curation; if taste and filters are weak or overlapping with LTFF/SFF/OP regranting, funds may be diffused into low-signal projects and social space with limited measurable x-risk reduction.
Case for funding: Funding Manifund scales a proven fast regranting pipeline with public rationales—88 grants in 2023 and $1.57M to technical safety—plus experiments like impact certificates and the Mox AI safety hub, letting you quickly seed overlooked early-stage work and community infrastructure that larger funders miss.