Future of Life Foundation (FLF)

The Future of Life Foundation (FLF) is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 2022 and based in Campbell, California (San Jose metro area). It operates as a sister organization to the Future of Life Institute (FLI), sharing the same overarching mission — to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks — but playing a distinct institutional role as an organizational incubator. While FLI conducts research, advocacy, outreach, storytelling, and direct grantmaking, FLF focuses exclusively on launching new organizations and major projects in the AI safety and existential risk space. Its four-step approach involves: (1) conducting research to identify critical gaps in efforts aligned with its mission; (2) determining which new organizations should be created to address those gaps; (3) headhunting and recruiting founders for selected ideas; and (4) providing comprehensive support to newly launched organizations, including seed funding, operational help, communications, media production, and collaborative partnerships. The foundation has a stated goal of launching three to five new organizations annually. FLF received approximately $25 million in initial contributions in its first year (2022), providing a substantial endowment to fund ongoing operations and grantmaking. Notable organizations launched or supported by FLF include CARMA, a technical AI policy organization led by Richard Mallah, and Wise Ancestors, a conservation genomics platform that received a grant of nearly $800,000 from FLF. In 2025, FLF also ran a Fellowship on AI for Human Reasoning, a 12-week program offering fellows $25,000–$50,000 stipends and optional workspace in the SF Bay Area to develop AI tools that enhance human reasoning. The organization is led by Anthony Aguirre (President), who also serves as Executive Director of FLI and is a physics professor at UC Santa Cruz. Other staff include Josh Jacobson (COO, previously at FAR AI and Anthropic), Oly Sourbut (Researcher, AI Specialist, formerly at the UK AI Safety Institute), Ben Goldhaber (Projects Lead), and Elizabeth Garrett (Headhunter and Recruitment Lead). The board includes Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn, and Meia Chita-Tegmark — co-founders of FLI. As of early 2025 the team was small but growing, described in interviews as recently having doubled from two staff members.