Eight Dedicated AI Nonprofits in 2018. Thirty in 2024.

Earlier this week I showed that the dedicated AI nonprofit field is still small: roughly $400 million a year in operating spending, as of the latest filings.

Small does not mean static. Here is the other half of the story.

Look at the 990 histories of the core organizations, setting aside the Allen Institute for AI, the one dominant institute, and the growth is steep. In 2018, eight of them filed, spending $61 million combined. By tax year 2024, thirty were filing, spending $173 million. Most of that growth came from new organizations forming, not incumbents getting larger.

Funding moved even faster. Foundations awarded just $5 million to $12 million a year in AI-purposed grants through 2019. Since 2022, that has jumped to $122 million to $167 million annually. The number of foundations making AI grants more than tripled, from 21 to 69, and was still climbing in the latest filings.

ChatGPT launched publicly in November 2022, so 2023 and 2024 are the first tax years that began entirely in the post-ChatGPT era. Because 990s arrive roughly a year after fiscal year-end, 2024 is also the most recent reasonably complete year.

And the chart shows another telling signal in the filings: the revenue line has run above the expense bars every year since 2021. The field has brought in more than it has spent, year after year.

So these numbers are floors. The field in 2026 is likely larger than the filings show. That is what a field being born looks like: not a mature market to select from, but a young one whose shape the next few years of checks will help set.

The full SciRise report on the AI nonprofit landscape comes out next week, covering which organizations actually make up the field, who funds them, and the intersections where almost nobody is working yet.

Source: SciRise Mission-Driven Capital Intelligence Dataset. SciRise is an independent venture and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Duke University.