80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours is a career-advice organization that "started in 2011 when our founders, Ben and Will, were about to graduate from Oxford," the founders' names linking to Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill. It began as a part-time project after a lecture the two gave in February 2011 and attended the Y Combinator startup accelerator in 2015.¹ It operated as a project of the charity company incorporated as the Centre for Effective Altruism, whose objects include "the advancement of education by providing sources of information about the ethics of career choices."² It completed its separation from that company, by then called Effective Ventures Foundation (UK), on 31 March 2025.³

Inside the Centre for Effective Altruism

The company that hosted 80,000 Hours had Nick Beckstead as a director from 23 February 2012 to 2 April 2019, and Robert Wiblin, later the organization's director of research, as company secretary from 21 April 2014 to 1 July 2015.⁴ The American charity, Centre for Effective Altruism USA Inc, listed Todd in its return for 2019 as "CEO of the 80,000 Hours project," paid 107,119 dollars; the same return listed Sam Bankman-Fried as a former board member of that charity.⁵

Open Philanthropy recommended 1,125,000 dollars to 80,000 Hours for general support in March 2017, with Beckstead, then a director of the hosting company, as grant investigator. The page states that "80,000 Hours staff also reviewed this page prior to publication," that the money would raise salaries "by about 30% from previously low levels, to match comparable organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area (to which 80,000 Hours has recently moved)," and that 80,000 Hours reported about 1,500 "impact-adjusted significant plan changes" since 2011. It also records Open Philanthropy's reservation that some 80,000 Hours documents "seem 'salesy' to us and to create an impression of more impact being attributable to 80,000 Hours than we believe is reasonable." A photograph caption names Todd as chief executive and Wiblin as director of research. The page does not mention Beckstead's directorship.⁶ The renewal of February 2018, 510,000 dollars, names Beckstead and Nicole Ross as investigators; its amount was set at the sum 80,000 Hours had raised from other donors in 2017.⁶

Later grants were recommended first by a "Committee for Effective Altruism Support" and then without a named investigator: 4,795,803 dollars over two years in February 2019, for "helping talented graduates age 20-40 enter high-impact careers"; 3,457,284 dollars in February 2020; 1,250,000 dollars in May 2022; 3,000,000 dollars for marketing and advertising in June 2022; 1,200,000 dollars in January 2023; 2,492,000 dollars for marketing in April 2023; 4,408,000 pounds (about 5,575,238 dollars) in May 2023; 4,250,000 dollars in two grants and 2,400,000 dollars for marketing in October 2023; 6,600,000 dollars in October 2024; and 2,700,000 dollars for marketing in February 2025, a page that refers to an earlier grant of December 2023. The thirteen grants whose pages were retrieved total 39,355,325 dollars. From February 2019 the pages place the grants within the program for "growing and empowering the community of people focused on global catastrophic risk reduction," later named "Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building."⁶

Claire Zabel, who according to Open Philanthropy "went on to lead our Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building team," was a director of the hosting company from 18 July 2019 to 28 March 2024, and Eli Rose, Open Philanthropy's program officer for the same program, has been a director since 9 February 2024.⁴⁷ The hosting charity's accounts state that both have "significant influence over some of the funding decisions made by Open Philanthropy in relation to several of the charity's projects."³

In a 2022 interview on the 80,000 Hours podcast, according to Charlotte Alter of TIME, MacAskill described himself as "remarkably aligned with Sam" and called the FTX Future Fund potentially "an enormous inflection point for EA."⁸

Accounts

The accounts of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) attribute 4,713,277 pounds of expenditure to 80,000 Hours in the year to June 2024 and 5,454,605 pounds in the year to June 2025, of which 3,645,558 pounds were direct costs, against 8,135,491 pounds for the Centre for Effective Altruism and 9,982,687 pounds for EA Funds and Giving What We Can. The trustees' report states that until the spin-out the project launched a video programme, automated "most of its headhunting pipeline," updated "its organisational strategy in light of recent technological developments," and grew its staff by 12 percent. The report records the charity's dependence on Open Philanthropy "for a majority of its funding."³

Spin-out

80,000 Hours announced its plan to leave Effective Ventures in December 2023 and announced the completion on 28 May 2025. It established two English entities: 80,000 Hours Limited, which "houses our website, podcast, job board, one-on-one service, and our operations," and 80,000 Hours Foundation, a registered charity to "facilitate donations and own the 80k intellectual property." The announcement named among the board members Konstantin Sietzy, "Deputy Director of Talent and Operations at UK AISI"; Alex Lawsen, "Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy and former 80,000 Hours Advising Manager"; Anna Weldon, "COO at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and former EV board member"; and Joshua Rosenberg, "CEO of the Forecasting Research Institute." It stated that 80,000 Hours had "recently sharpened our focus on careers that can help make AI go well."⁹

80,000 Hours Limited, company number 15746854, a company limited by guarantee registered at 20 Old Bailey in London, was incorporated on 28 May 2024 with three directors, who resigned as directors on 19 March 2025 and were appointed company secretaries the same day, when five new directors were appointed, among them Sietzy, Weldon, Rosenberg and Lawsen (registered as Alex Ritchie Jack Lawson); a further director replaced one of the five on 23 May 2025. The five current directors are each registered as having significant influence or control. 80,000 Hours Foundation, number 15777224, was incorporated on 13 June 2024 at the same address; its sole registered controller is 80,000 Hours Limited, with 75 percent or more of the voting rights and the right to appoint directors, and Weldon has been a director since 10 April 2025.¹⁰