Exclusive / AI nonprofit will spend $10 million on journalism - Semafor
A Silicon Valley nonprofit close to the AI safety movement is pledging $10 million by the end of 2027 to fund mainstream and independent coverage of artificial intelligence.
The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism plans to announce that it is launching an institutional grantmaking fund, which executive director Cillian Crosson said will provide grants to newsrooms and other ambitious AI reporting projects.
The first recipient of the grant is Machine Gods, NPR’s new video podcast from former Hard Fork hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, which is receiving a $480,000 grant from the organization. Tarbell is also separately backing NPR’s “Power and Influence” desk, giving the public media outlet $250,000 to help expand its coverage of how AI intersects with politics, money, and power.
“We think that having resources at newsrooms is an important part of ensuring strong coverage,” Crosson told Semafor. The new fund will “increase our support but it also allows us to more easily support a more diverse range of perspectives.”
The organization, which is backed by groups including the deep-pocketed nonprofit Coefficient Giving, said it plans to fund investigative teams, AI verticals at national outlets, and other large-scale initiatives in new and legacy media. In particular, the organization is focused on expanding reporting and on frontier companies and the ways that AI companies and aligned political action groups are influencing American politics and tech regulations.
It’s a significant expansion from the organization’s previous commitments, which have totaled $400,000 over four years. Tarbell’s previous grants focused on backing early-career journalists inside established newsrooms, offering media organizations reporting grants ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 to work on individual stories on AI.
With increased monetary backing, the organization said it planned to issue grants between $50,000 and $500,000, but could make multimillion-dollar grants for the right projects.
In recent years, Tarbell fellows have fanned out across several major news outlets, breaking stories that have often exposed reckless or aggressive actions by AI companies and frontier labs.
Though Tarbell offers funding with no formal strings attached, it has drawn criticism from some in the AI industry and on the political right who see it as fueling what they view as exaggerated safety concerns. The subjects of some of Tarbell’s journalism, including OpenAI, have complained about the reporting and financial support from some organizations aligned with effective altruism, a loose philosophical movement whose concerns include an AI-driven apocalypse.
As Semafor previously reported, cash-strapped news organizations have balanced concerns about optics of outside groups funding journalism with the much-needed financial support and aggressive journalists who have broken legitimate stories about AI and safety concerns. Semafor has not found instances where Tarbell interfered directly in any stories, and the organization is quick to point out that not all of the projects it backs are AI skeptics or strong AI safety proponents.
In a telephone interview last week, Crosson reminded Semafor that the organization has two editorial firewalls: One between itself and its backers, and another between Tarbell and the media organizations it supports. It discloses its donors over $10,000, its fellows maintain complete autonomy over their reporting, and the organization asks news outlets it partners with to disclose when it has provided funding to support a journalist or project.
In an interview with Semafor, Roose noted that Newton had worked with Tarbell at Platformer in recent years, and found the organization to be a strong supporter of independent journalism, and did not interfere or insert itself into any editorial content.
“Their funding has been very useful in helping us get started,” Roose said. “It was a way for us to de-risk going out on our own. We’re feeling quite good about it and we’re grateful.”
