Horizon Institute for Public Service

The Horizon Institute for Public Service was founded as a 501(c)(3) public charity in 2022 by Remco Zwetsloot and Joan Gass. In its words, its "founding was inspired by the initial success of Open Philanthropy's Technology Policy Fellowship," and it was "grateful to Open Philanthropy for supporting Horizon's initial operations." Its flagship program, the Horizon Fellowship, "places fully-funded fellows at federal agencies, congressional offices, and think tanks." In March 2023 its first cohort was serving at the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, the Senate Commerce and House Science committees, member offices, and the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.¹ Zwetsloot had been on the founding team of what he called "DC's first AI policy-focused think tank."²

Advisers and Funders

Horizon's advisory board in 2023 comprised Kari Bingen, former deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and security; Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council; Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the Navy; Michael Kratsios, then managing director at Scale AI and former chief technology officer of the United States; Jason Matheny, chief executive of the RAND Corporation and former director of IARPA; Nadia Schadlow, former deputy national security adviser for strategy; Lieutenant General (ret.) Jack Shanahan, inaugural director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center; and Andrew Weber, former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.¹ Its later adviser list described Shanahan as "former inaugural Director of Project Maven and the Joint AI Center."²

Horizon says it takes no government or corporate money and that "no foundation or donor provides a majority of our funding." It lists as funders Helena, Renaissance Philanthropy, the Maurice Amado Foundation, the Policy Entrepreneurs Network, the Lonsdale Family Philanthropic Fund of the Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Coefficient Giving (the renamed Open Philanthropy), the Navigation Fund, theDavid and Lucile Packard Foundation, Fulcrum Science, the John Quincy Adams Society and Sentinel Bio.²

The Politico Report

On October 13, 2023, the Politico reporter Brendan Bordelon reported that Horizon was "a nonprofit that Open Philanthropy effectively created in 2022," that "in 2022, Open Philanthropy set aside nearly $3 million to pay for what ultimately became the initial cohort of Horizon fellows," and that Horizon fellows worked in the offices of Senators Martin Heinrich, Mike Rounds and Todd Young, the three senators Chuck Schumer had put in charge of AI legislation, and of Senator Richard Blumenthal, whose AI fellow had worked at OpenAI immediately before coming to Congress. Photographs from the closed-door Senate AI Insight Forum of September 2023 showed at least two Horizon fellows, from the Rounds and Heinrich offices, in attendance. The Intergovernmental Personnel Act of 1970 allows nonprofits to pay the salaries of fellows working in Congress and the executive branch.³

An Open Philanthropy spokesperson, Mike Levine, told Bordelon that Horizon "originally started the fellowship as consultants to Open Phil until they could launch their own legal entity and pay fellows' salaries directly," but that Open Philanthropy "did not play an active role in screening, training, or placement of fellows." Bordelon reported that an Open Philanthropy Google document last updated in August 2022 said the fellowship would consider candidates "who share Open Philanthropy's interests in global catastrophic risks and technology's long-term impacts." Zwetsloot said the program was "not for the pursuit of particular policy goals" and did not screen applicants for their views on AI risk. Tim Stretton of the Project On Government Oversight called it "a conflict of interest," and David Skaggs, former chairman of the Office of Congressional Ethics, compared it to "a parallel situation in which [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] had some ostensibly arm's-length foundation funding foreign policy experts for Hill offices." Spokespeople for Blumenthal, Heinrich and Young said the senators made their own policy decisions.³

In December 2025 Semafor reported that Open Philanthropy had "been bothered by media coverage of it, in particular a series of critical stories from Politico," had hired experienced political communications staff, and had renamed itself Coefficient Giving.⁴

Export Controls

In November 2025 the Washington Examiner reporter Robert Schmad wrote that two of Horizon's own fellow profiles mentioned export controls: a fellow at the House Foreign Affairs Committee had done work "supporting export controls," and a fellow at the Bureau of Industry and Security had researched "export controls and their ability to mitigate converged AI and bio risks"; both received offers to stay in government. Senator Jim Banks, who hosted a Horizon fellow, introduced the GAIN AI Act in August 2025 to give American buyers priority for advanced chips, and his office had drafted letters with that of Senator Elizabeth Warren on Nvidia's dealings with China; Banks's office did not answer whether the fellow played a role. Horizon told the paper: "Horizon helps policymakers access deeply needed technical talent, and we do not take or advance particular policy positions."⁵

In September 2026 the publication Effort, founded by Brian Chau, wrote that Horizon had "received over $12M from Open Philanthropy/Coefficient Giving," that "EA fellowships have placed over 50 staffers in Congress and the administrative branch," and that Horizon's standard base offer had risen from 105,000 dollars for the 2023 cohort to 130,000 dollars for 2027. It quoted an unnamed senior staffer in a Republican senator's office: "He went to Democrat policy meetings, and tried to hand Democrat policies to [the Senator he worked for]." It wrote, citing a former employee of the Foundation for American Innovation, that Horizon's former strategy and partnerships director, Sophia Brown, had been hired into the Trump administration's Center for AI Standards and Innovation under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act through that foundation.⁶