An online forecasting platform and aggregation engine that harnesses collective intelligence to produce calibrated predictions on questions of global importance, including AI timelines, biosecurity, nuclear risk, and climate change.
An online forecasting platform and aggregation engine that harnesses collective intelligence to produce calibrated predictions on questions of global importance, including AI timelines, biosecurity, nuclear risk, and climate change.
People
Updated 05/18/26Chief Executive Officer
Geopolitical Forecasting (Independent)
Funding Details
Updated 05/18/26- Annual Budget
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- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
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- Funding Raised to Date
- $6,900,000
Org Details
Updated 05/18/26Metaculus is a public benefit corporation that operates an online forecasting platform designed to improve human reasoning and coordination on topics of global importance. Founded in November 2015 by physicist Anthony Aguirre, astronomer Greg Laughlin, and data scientist Max Wainwright, the platform enables users to submit probabilistic predictions on binary, numerical-range, and date-range questions. Metaculus aggregates these individual forecasts into a community prediction using a recency-weighted median, which on average outperforms the median of individual predictions. As of 2025, the platform hosts over 21,000 questions with more than 9,000 resolved, and has received over 2.9 million predictions. In 2022, Metaculus restructured as a public benefit corporation with a charter committing it to three goals: fostering the growth of the forecasting community, supporting stakeholders serving the public good by informing their decision-making, and increasing public access to forecasts of public interest. That same year, Metaculus received a $5.5 million grant from Open Philanthropy to fund hiring and platform development for high-impact forecasting programs on AI, biosecurity, climate change, and nuclear security. Metaculus operates several key programs. Its Pro Forecasters program selects the most accurate community forecasters to deliver calibrated predictions with detailed reasoning for institutional partners. In a notable partnership with the CDC, Metaculus Pro Forecasters contribute to the annual Respiratory Disease Season Outlook, marking the first time the CDC incorporated aggregate probability estimates from crowd forecasting into its public health guidance. The platform also runs large-scale forecasting competitions, including the Bridgewater x Metaculus Forecasting Contest, which attracted over 17,000 competitors globally in 2025. In February 2026, Metaculus launched FutureEval, a continuously updated benchmark measuring how accurately AI systems predict real-world events compared to human forecasters. FutureEval includes a Model Leaderboard tracking major AI models and Bot Tournaments with $175,000 in annual prizes. Current projections suggest AI systems could surpass the broader Metaculus community by April 2026 and Pro Forecasters by mid-2027. In 2024, Metaculus completely rewrote its platform and made the codebase open source, with a third of code contributors now coming from outside the organization. The platform has been used to generate forecasts relevant to existential risk reduction, including AI timelines, nuclear weapons policy, pandemic preparedness, and climate scenarios. Metaculus has collaborated with the Federation of American Scientists on policy recommendations for using crowd forecasting in government decision-making. The organization's leadership transitioned in 2024 when Deger Turan became CEO, succeeding co-founder Gaia Dempsey who moved to a Special Advisor and board member role. Anthony Aguirre, who also co-founded the Future of Life Institute, remains involved as a co-founder. As of early 2026, Metaculus has approximately 28 employees across multiple continents.
Theory of Change
Updated 05/18/26Metaculus believes that better forecasting leads to better decisions on the world's most consequential challenges. By aggregating the predictions of thousands of forecasters into well-calibrated probability estimates, the platform aims to provide decision-makers in government, philanthropy, and research with actionable foresight on issues like AI development trajectories, pandemic risk, nuclear security, and climate change. Their theory of change operates through three channels: providing forecasts as a public good that reduce uncertainty around high-stakes decisions, building a global forecasting community that improves collective epistemic capacity, and advancing forecasting methodology through research and AI benchmarking. For existential risk specifically, Metaculus enables the EA and longtermist communities to track and quantify risks from advanced AI, engineered pandemics, and other global catastrophic scenarios, helping funders and policymakers allocate resources more effectively by grounding debates in calibrated probabilistic reasoning rather than intuition alone.
Grants Received
Updated 05/18/26Projects
Updated 05/18/26FutureEval is Metaculus’s continuously updated benchmark that measures how accurately AI systems predict real-world events and compares their performance to human forecasters across domains including science, technology, health, geopolitics, and AI.
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