CLR Fund

The CLR Fund is the grantmaking arm of the Center on Long-Term Risk (CLR), a registered charity in England and Wales (charity no. 1195079) headquartered in London. CLR was originally established in 2013 as the Foundational Research Institute (FRI) under the Effective Altruism Foundation (EAF), a Swiss nonprofit. It was renamed the Center on Long-Term Risk in March 2020 and became a fully independent UK charity in late 2021; prior to that, all CLR Fund grants were disbursed by EAF. From late 2024 onwards, all grants are paid solely by CLR. The CLR Fund primarily supports individuals who want to make research contributions to CLR's current priority areas — reducing risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks) from powerful AI systems — but also funds other high-quality projects that the fund managers believe will contribute to s-risk reduction. Recipients may be charitable organizations, academic institutions, or individual researchers. Past grantees have included PhD students (receiving tuition and stipends), academic researchers seeking teaching buyouts, independent researchers, and organizations such as the Wild Animal Initiative. Notable grants include support for research on evidential decision theory, short AI timelines, simplicity bias in neural networks, and ethics of panspermia. Grant decisions are made by a simple majority of three fund managers: Tobias Baumann (PhD candidate in machine learning), Emery Cooper (formerly at CLR, now at Carnegie Mellon's Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab), and Tristan Cook (CLR Managing Director since 2025). Applications are evaluated on a rolling basis. A conflict-of-interest policy prohibits any grants to CLR itself. As of the most recent data available, the fund held a balance of approximately $382,833 and had distributed $1,889,695 in total grants since inception. CLR itself is a small research organization with approximately nine core staff members and a broader network of advisors. It receives institutional funding from Open Philanthropy, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, the Cooperative AI Foundation, and the Foresight Institute. The CLR Fund accepts restricted donations specifically for grantmaking activity, separate from general CLR operating donations, through its website and through Giving What We Can.

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