#254 – Max Nadeau on recruiting founders for a new wave of AI safety nonprofits
There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money.
Coefficient Giving has drawn up a list of dozens of ideas for organisations it would like someone to start — and it’s looking for founders. Today’s guest, Max Nadeau, works on Coefficient Giving’s Technical AI Safety team, where he’s trying to find talented people who can turn neglected AI safety problems into effective organisations.
Project Tailwind is Coefficient Giving’s attempt to get those organisations started.
- Preseed grants run $200,000–$2 million, with no preliminary results required.
- Teams with early results can seek $2–$20 million.
- For exceptional organisations, much larger grants are possible, even for brand-new startups— Coefficient recently gave $160 million to Geoffrey Irving’s new research centre, Resolution.
- The gaps Max most wants filled include independent assessment of AI companies’ safety claims, research aimed at aligning far more powerful systems, and shared infrastructure that speeds up the whole field.
But money can’t supply the hardest part: a founder with a convincing account of how their work will actually reduce catastrophic risks. Producing good research is only one step. Someone has to use it, change their decisions, or adopt the safeguards it makes possible.
Max and host Zershaaneh Qureshi discuss what makes a proposal worth backing, why nonprofits can have a bigger impact on safety than frontier companies, and which gaps most urgently need someone to fill them.
AI safety is a very ‘online’ community — use this to your advantage.




