https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/asthpxHedcbjxTSaF/there-will-be-many-more-effective-altruist-billionaires Is this link the post you're referring to? The first link you sent doesn't lead to a post at all.

I still want at least 2 clarifications:

• If ETH goes up and vitalik identifies, will he count?

• If someone marries a billionaire, do they count?

  • Ie Do Cari and dustin count as 1 or 2?

@DwarkeshPatel any thoughts?

@JonasVollmer rip in uncertainty

So what:
- 1 x notion
- 2 x anthropic
- .5 x Vitalik
- .7 x Canva
- 1 x other AI startup

Seems like we are still missing about 4?

@NathanpmYoung who will be/are the anthropic billionaires?

@harfe I don't know much but aren't some of the founders EAs and didn't google just pay 300mn for 30%. Seems like they are nearly billionaires.

@NathanpmYoung *Google paid 300M for 10% I believe.

@MathieuPutz Sorry yes. But that strengthens my point.

@NathanpmYoung Where did you get that info on the Notion and Canva folks? Never heard of any big donors from those companies. And I assume "1x other AI startup" is a guess or is it also based on someone you know?

@NathanpmYoung Oh and 1.5 for Wave.

Come on, if you have any faith in AI over the next 4 years it's not unreasonable to think a bunch of EAs are gonna shoot the moon.

becoming a billionaire requires playing dirty and causing more harm than good in order to take enough reins of the capitalist command economy and redirect the flow of valuable goods and services so that you accumulate rent rapidly, usually from stock ownership, which is an incredibly unfavorable type of loan; I don't think EAs are unethical enough to become billionaires.

@L and if you see one who is trying to become a billionaire, well, SBF shows why that should be a red flag.

@L What about Dustin?

@L counterargument: if a major criminal used it to whitewash their reputation, it must be a good thing!

@L Becoming a billionaire can just be a case of making some investments that pay off big time (e.g. crypto or start-ups). In that case all you are doing is hodling for the most part.

The original thesis was basically right: a lot of naive people were conned into working hard for FTX, capital flowed cheaply, no one asked for a CFO or audit, all the early employees of Alameda were screwed over but assumed it was for the greater good.

The dark side is it attracted no one capable of creating even a mediocre exchanges (FTX was notorious for horrible latency, and apparently stored their private keys in google docs); and the hedge fund was midwit at best—super-Kelly betting is insane.

It really was a marketing machine: cheap altruistic laborers, cheap dumb money (they don’t make Sequoia partners like they used to), and pay-to-play schemes for enticing celebrities into endorsing it.

Everyone so high on “saving the world” that no one did their job in any meaningful way (zero diligence, zero accounting, zero security, etc.)

The entire thing devoid of any effort to build a fundamentally sound product or business.

—

Robin Hanson increasingly looking like a prophet—perhaps the real altruism really is just be good at what you do and provide more than you take; basic morality and ethics of what it meant to be a good citizen from Greek philosophers to Christian church onwards, perhaps also the best way to build a good business

@Gigacasting great article thanks for linking.

Forbes' 35th annual billionaire list has 2,755 names – that's 660 more than in 2020. That's a 32% increase in the number of billionaires. (source)

Doesn't seem out of the question, but 10 new ones? Hmmm. Around half of my uncertainty is in the resolution criteria. Hard to know what would count. A lot more likely if they don't have to self-identify, but they still donate largely using EA principles.

There will probably still be people effectively being EAs, but imo recent events strongly will bias people towards not self-IDing

Market seems unreasonably depressed by SBF news. Taking a long position

tbc, they must identify as EAs when the market resolves - whether they identify as EAs now or at any other time does not matter.

@DwarkeshPatel you should change the description then. It says that the billionaires have to not be billionaires now and it seems to imply that they have to be EAs now.

@patodesu Yes very unclear