#254 – Max Nadeau on why ambitious people should start AI safety nonprofits

There are millions available for anyone who can launch a successful nonprofit AI safety startup. The hard part, it turns out, is finding people to take the money. Coefficient Giving has drawn up a list of dozens of ideas for organisations it would like someone to start — and it’s looking for founders.

Today’s guest, Max Nadeau, works on Coefficient Giving’s Technical AI Safety team, where he’s trying to find talented people who can turn neglected AI safety problems into effective organisations.

Project Tailwind is Coefficient Giving’s attempt to get those organisations started.

• Preseed grants run $200,000–$2 million, with no preliminary results required.
• Teams with early results can seek $2–$20 million.
• For exceptional organisations, much larger grants are possible, even for brand-new startups— Coefficient recently gave $160 million to Geoffrey Irving’s new research centre, Resolution.
• The gaps Max most wants filled include independent assessment of AI companies’ safety claims, research aimed at aligning far more powerful systems, and shared infrastructure that speeds up the whole field.

Project Tailwind website: https://80k.info/tailwind

But money can’t supply the hardest part: a founder with a convincing account of how their work will actually reduce catastrophic risks. Producing good research is only one step. Someone has to use it, change their decisions, or adopt the safeguards it makes possible.

Max and host Zershaaneh Qureshi discuss what makes a proposal worth backing, why nonprofits can have a bigger impact on safety than frontier companies, and which gaps most urgently need someone to fill them.

Learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/mn — and if you know someone who would be a great founder, pass their name along to tailwind@cg.org and encourage them to submit an expression of interest.

Disclosure: Coefficient Giving is 80,000 Hours’s largest donor, though we haven’t received funding directly from Max’s team.

This episode was recorded on August 18, 2026.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Who’s Max Nadeau? (00:00:37)
• Max’s journey from AI research to grantmaking (00:01:55)
• Project Tailwind: Funding ambitious AI safety nonprofits (00:03:24)
• “The only bottleneck is talent” (00:13:23)
• Mistakes startups make (00:19:52)
• The importance of dramatic pivots (00:22:34)
• Why AI safety needs outsiders (00:28:16)
• Is impact possible within AI companies? (00:37:06)
• Working at AI companies to escape the permanent underclass (00:41:44)
• For-profit vs nonprofit for ambitious founders (00:44:34)
• What makes a bad founder? (00:50:50)
• Top 6 AI safety ideas Max wants to fund (00:55:40)
• Improving your odds of getting a grant (01:01:57)

Our production team includes:

• Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
• Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton
• Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran

Music: CORBIT