Metaculus forecast giving of only $25.7B over 4 years from the IPO windfall

By Rasool @ 2026-09-30T18:58 (+16)

This is a linkpost to https://metaculus.substack.com/p/ai-ipo-windfall-prediction-forecast-radiant-visual-mapping

Edit: I scooped the official post by 14 minutes 😬, check it out here

Our forecasts currently show over $100B total pledged.

But, as our forecasters have noted, this likely won’t translate into immediate actual money in the bank. They expect only about $25.7B total will actually land in charities within 4 years of shareholders being able to sell after the lockup period ends.

Projected figures for windfall are high but vary widely. Nan Ransohoff says people can expect $37B or more per year from this “third wave” of American philanthropy; George Weiner projects $12-32B will go into donor-advised funds (DAFs) and trickle out through grants; Giving What We Can expects about $15B in donations a year; and Celia Ford claims the 7 Anthropic co-founders alone could contribute $37.9B.

Our forecast, including assumptions, probability distributions, and how everything connects, lives in The IPO Windfall map on Radiant, our visual mapping platform for collaborative scenario modeling.

Prior art: 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sQH5oWAcongoEEF2P/make-your-own-model-of-the-ai-windfall