---
category: AI & Effective Altruism
created: 2026-09-22
relations:
- fn: 2
  role: AI governance grantmaker
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Open Philanthropy]]'
- end: 2024-05-28
  fn: 4
  role: board of directors
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Anthropic]]'
summary: Open Philanthropy's head of AI governance grantmaking, investigator on its
  grants launching CSET and funding RAND at Jason Matheny's discretion, and an Anthropic
  director until May 2024.
tags:
- Person
- OpenPhilanthropy
- Anthropic
- AIGovernance
- EffectiveAltruism
updated: 2026-09-23
---

Luke Muehlhauser was the grant investigator for [Open Philanthropy](/organizations/open-philanthropy/)'s 55-million-dollar grant of January 2019 to Georgetown University that launched the [Center for Security and Emerging Technology](/organizations/center-for-security-and-emerging-technology/) under the former IARPA director [Jason Matheny](/people/jason-matheny/), with [Helen Toner](/people/helen-toner/), formerly of Open Philanthropy, on its founding team.[^1] After Matheny became chief executive of the [RAND Corporation](/organizations/rand-corporation/), Muehlhauser, described by Open Philanthropy as the person "who leads our grantmaking on AI governance," recommended its gift of 10.5 million dollars in October 2023, which followed an April 2023 gift, "to be spent at the discretion of RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny."[^2]

In October 2023 *Politico* reported that Muehlhauser, "Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for AI governance and policy," was one of the four members of the board of [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/), in which Open Philanthropy's funder [Dustin Moskovitz](/people/dustin-moskovitz/) had invested.[^3] He resigned from the board on May 28, 2024. In a post of June 12, 2024, he wrote that "it became increasingly complicated over time for me to simultaneously be (a) an AI governance grantmaker at Open Philanthropy (my day job), where we support a wide variety of organizations including some who work on US AI policy, and (b) a Board member at a US-based frontier AI company (though I've never held any Anthropic equity)," and that the resignation was not safety-related.[^4]

[^1]: Open Philanthropy, "Georgetown University, Center for Security and Emerging Technology," grant of January 2019, archived January 2, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035307/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/georgetown-university-center-for-security-and-emerging-technology/
[^2]: Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, Emerging Technology Initiatives," gift of October 2023, archived January 22, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250122041729/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-emerging-technology-initiatives/
[^3]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
[^4]: Muehlhauser, Luke. "Why I resigned from the Anthropic Board." June 12, 2024. https://lukemuehlhauser.com/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropic-board/