The AI philanthropy boom could hit $430B — rivaling Gilded Age largess of Rockefellers, Fords
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Initial public offerings for OpenAI and Anthropic stand to unlock an estimated $430 billion in charity pledges, rivaling the gifts of American tycoons during the Gilded Age.
With the companies’ looming IPOs estimated to generate more than $1 trillion each, both AI giants have pledged to give billions of dollars away in what would be an unprecedented philanthropic wave that could benefit charities around the world, The Economist reported.
“This could be a moment where hundreds of millions of lives can be improved, and there may not be many moments like that in history,” said Nick Allardice of the charity GiveDirectly, which doles out cash to the poor.
Anthropic alone is expected to end up donating around $110 billion solely on the promise made by its seven co-founders, who vowed to give away 80% of their wealth to good causes, according to Forbes.
Another $60 billion would come from Anthropic employees’ donor-advised funds, as the company also matches its workers’ charitable contributions to the pots.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has its non-profit OpenAI Foundation, which uses the company’s vast resources to fund large-scale philanthropic grants.
With the foundation holding 26% of OpenAI’s stock, the organization may soon have an estimated $260 billion to give away.
The total funds for charity from OpenAI and Anthropic stand at about 1.3% of America’s total GDP and rival the relative sum given away by the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.
The donations would also blow away the philanthropic wave of the Internet boom, where those companies gave away about $230 billion between 1990 and 2018, according to The Economist.
But the AI companies’ donations are not set in stone, as their IPO estimates continue to fluctuate with no set date yet on when the companies’ public offerings will hit the market.
It also remains to be seen if the companies, their leaders and the employees will commit to give away as much as they promise to, but current trends keep the outlook positive.
Big tech often likes to spend its funds on tangible endeavors that seek to do the most good for society, such as earlier this summer when the two AI companies and Stripe, a payments firm, led a $500 million donation to find a vaccine for cold and flu viruses.
Coefficient Giving, an American philanthropic advising and funding organization, said it helped give out $1 billion in the first half of the year, matching the funds donated in all of 2025.
Last month, the company also said it increased its commitment to GiveWell, another charity, to $1 billion.