Innovation brings risk Some of the greatest threats we face come from advances in biotechnology and advanced AI systems.
Global Catastrophic Risks Fund
Our Global Catastrophic Risks Fund tackles far-future threats and takes action now to help protect every human being alive today. Donate to the Fund today and join us in supporting the world's most impactful and neglected initiatives to reduce the probability of worldwide catastrophes and mitigate their consequences.
Our objective
Stop the next global catastrophe in its tracks
We live in an era of new perils.
Humanity faces existential risks, including war between great powers, natural and engineered pandemics, thermonuclear war, threats from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and frontier military technologies.
These global catastrophic risks have the potential to kill hundreds of millions, even billions, of people alive today.
We can come together – scientists, policymakers, engineers, military leaders, and motivated citizens – to mitigate these risks. It's happened before. During the Cold War, political leaders negotiated to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. At the turn of the millennium, scientists tracked large asteroids and comets in Earth’s vicinity. Today, countries are working together on global preparedness for the next pandemic disease.
The Global Catastrophic Risks Fund (GCRF) tackles far-future threats and takes action now to help protect every human being alive today. We aim to:
- Reduce the probability of large-scale catastrophic events;
- Mitigate the potential negative impacts of these events if they occur;
- Improve the ability to anticipate new and emerging risks on the horizon.
Want to tackle climate change? We have an entire Fund dedicated to it.
The Global Catastrophic Risks Fund is a philanthropic co-funding vehicle that does not provide investment returns.
▲ Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash
2025 GCR Fund Impact Report
Our 2025 Fund Impact Report highlights how the GCR Fund is translating concern about humanity’s most severe threats into concrete action. In 2025, the GCR Fund supported a portfolio of high-impact grants spanning three primary streams of work: strengthening diplomatic channels, research and knowledge generation, and improving risk mitigation capacity.
Read the report to see how targeted, cost-effective philanthropy can meaningfully reduce the risk of global catastrophes—today and in the decades to come.
Give to the Global Catastrophic Risks Fund
Help safeguard humanity’s future by backing the most impactful, overlooked work to prevent global catastrophes.
Donate to the Global Catastrophic Risks Fund
Our strategy
We find opportunities to support highly impactful and neglected initiatives to reduce the probability of worldwide catastrophes and mitigate their consequences. This is a complex mission, with an ever-changing threat landscape. We give special consideration to threats that could curtail humanity’s future, leaning towards tractable solutions today. By seeking opportunities that are neglected by other grant-makers, we can ensure that the Fund is as high-leverage as possible.
Grant-making
Our decision-making is guided by three core values: impact, innovation, and flexibility.
- To maximize impact, our grant portfolio includes both direct interventions, like funding the development of new crisis communications technology or personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as research and hits-based bets. Hits-based bets are initiatives where success is less certain, but where there is potential to improve many more lives if successful.
- We are committed to innovation, including developing new and better approaches to grantmaking, and providing seed funding for novel projects.
- We maintain flexibility to respond rapidly to emerging crises and windows of opportunity. We work with networks of domain experts, trusted partners, and government decision-makers to identify new opportunities, and deploy funds in the most effective ways.
When evaluating potential grants, we consider several factors:
- Counterfactual impact.
- Collaborating with trusted partners.
- Avoiding harm and information hazards.
- Filling funding gaps.
- Organizational strength.
- Seizing time-sensitive opportunities and policy windows.
▲ Photo by CDC on Unsplash
Direct and co-funded grants
*Grants marked with an asterisk were not originally paid in USD; the amounts shown are converted reference values.
Geopolitical fragmentation and the erosion of multilateral institutions threaten the effectiveness of international systems designed to manage global catastrophic risks. Our funding launches Phase 1 of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Global Guardrails Project, which convenes experts and produces new frameworks for international crisis management and risk reduction to shape a more resilient global order.
Policy decisions about space-based missile interceptors are hampered by a lack of specific threat modeling and design parameters. Our funding supports Georgia Tech and the Centre for International Governance Innovation in developing an open-access interactive modeling tool and convening expert workshops to clarify the strategic risks of space-based interceptors and inform policymakers and arms control communities.
Enabling INHR to share their recommendations for governments on AI-bio risks at the AI Impact Summit in India in February 2026, including recommendations around the importance of gene synthesis screening, laboratory safety, and other critical issues.
Advised grants
These grants have been identified, evaluated and advised on by Fund Managers; resources were deployed by external philanthropists through their giving infrastructure, separately from the Fund.
To launch Project "Averting Armageddon"
Seed funding to launch the organization
For the U.S.-China Strategic Nuclear Dialogues
Our impact
Learn More
Theories of Change for Track 2 Diplomacy
New research and recommendations on Advanced AI
Great power competition and transformative technologies report
Global Catastrophic Biological Risks: A guide for Philanthropists
Global Catastrophic Nuclear Risk: A guide for philanthropists
Great power conflict report
