Form 990 for tax year 2024
Filed by CENTER FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SAFETY INC.
Totals
- Total revenue
- $10,235,085
- Total expenses
- $7,163,607
- Contributions and grants received
- $9,596,669
- Grants paid
- $0
- Program service revenue
- $256,598
- Investment income
- $333,081
- Other revenue
- $48,737
- Total assets, end of year
- $12,638,754
- Total liabilities, end of year
- $1,029,036
- Net assets or fund balances, end of year
- $11,609,718
- Program services expenses (Part IX)
- $6,288,786
- Management and general expenses
- $729,132
- Fundraising expenses
- $145,689
- Program service expenses (Part III)
- $6,288,786
Program services were 87.8% of total expenses calculated — Part IX's program-services column over total expenses, both as filed.
Line items
Every line the filer filed in Parts VIII, IX and X, as filed and in filed order. Blank columns are left out, and the lines are not forced to add up to the totals above.
Revenue
Part VIII, the statement of revenue.
-
1f · All other contributions, gifts and grants
$9,596,669
-
2a · Program service revenue: Computing Services
total $256,598 · related or exempt $256,598
-
3 · Investment income
total $384,256 · excluded $384,256
-
4 · Income from investment of tax-exempt bond proceeds
total $0
-
5 · Royalties
total $0
-
6d · Net rental income or loss
total $0
-
7a · Gross sales of assets other than inventory
securities $483,555
-
7b · Less cost or other basis and sales expenses
securities $534,730
-
7c · Gain or loss
securities -$51,175
-
7d · Net gain or loss
total -$51,175 · excluded -$51,175
-
8c · Net income from fundraising events
total $0
-
9c · Net income from gaming
total $0
-
10c · Net income from sales of inventory
total $0
-
11a · Other revenue: Reimbursements
total $48,737 · excluded $48,737
-
11e · Other revenue, total
$48,737
Functional expenses
Part IX, the statement of functional expenses.
-
1 · Grants to domestic organizations and governments
total $0
-
2 · Grants to domestic individuals
total $0
-
3 · Grants to foreign organizations and individuals
total $0
-
4 · Benefits paid to or for members
total $0
-
5 · Compensation of officers, directors and key employees
total $671,182 · program services $460,536 · management and general $124,602 · fundraising $86,044
-
6 · Compensation of disqualified persons
total $0
-
7 · Other salaries and wages
total $1,825,944 · program services $1,597,557 · management and general $206,150 · fundraising $22,237
-
8 · Pension plan contributions
total $59,218 · program services $52,914 · management and general $5,625 · fundraising $679
-
9 · Other employee benefits
total $94,909 · program services $80,146 · management and general $12,223 · fundraising $2,540
-
10 · Payroll taxes
total $179,270 · program services $145,616 · management and general $25,498 · fundraising $8,156
-
11a · Fees: management
total $0
-
11b · Fees: legal
total $106,916 · management and general $106,916
-
11c · Fees: accounting
total $39,769 · management and general $39,769
-
11d · Fees: lobbying
total $0
-
11e · Fees: professional fundraising services
total $0
-
11f · Fees: investment management
total $0
-
11g · Fees: other
total $548,079 · program services $455,553 · management and general $92,526
-
12 · Advertising and promotion
total $15,291 · management and general $15,291
-
13 · Office expenses
total $9,814 · program services $7,972 · management and general $1,396 · fundraising $446
-
14 · Information technology
total $0
-
15 · Royalties
total $0
-
16 · Occupancy
total $212,859 · program services $172,899 · management and general $30,276 · fundraising $9,684
-
17 · Travel
total $55,157 · program services $44,803 · management and general $7,845 · fundraising $2,509
-
18 · Travel or entertainment for public officials
total $0
-
19 · Conferences, conventions and meetings
total $0
-
20 · Interest
total $0
-
21 · Payments to affiliates
total $0
-
22 · Depreciation, depletion and amortization
total $2,615 · program services $2,124 · management and general $372 · fundraising $119
-
23 · Insurance
total $8,581 · management and general $8,581
-
24a · Other expenses: compute cluster
total $2,947,725 · program services $2,947,497 · management and general $228
-
24b · Other expenses: in office meals
total $110,221 · program services $89,530 · management and general $15,677 · fundraising $5,014
-
24c · Other expenses: software
total $91,744 · program services $74,521 · management and general $13,049 · fundraising $4,174
-
24d · Other expenses: website
total $61,249 · program services $49,751 · management and general $8,712 · fundraising $2,786
-
24e · All other expenses
total $123,064 · program services $107,367 · management and general $14,396 · fundraising $1,301
Balance sheet
Part X, book values.
-
1 · Cash, non-interest-bearing
beginning of year $1,286,542 · end of year $10,026,659
-
2 · Savings and temporary cash investments
end of year $0
-
3 · Pledges and grants receivable
beginning of year $190,000 · end of year $1,875,682
-
4 · Accounts receivable
beginning of year $25,262 · end of year $125,828
-
5 · Loans and receivables from officers and key people
end of year $0
-
6 · Loans and receivables from disqualified persons
end of year $0
-
7 · Other notes and loans receivable
end of year $0
-
8 · Inventories for sale or use
end of year $0
-
9 · Prepaid expenses and deferred charges
beginning of year $27,965 · end of year $98,174
-
10a · Land, buildings and equipment: cost or other basis
$17,098
-
10b · Land, buildings and equipment: accumulated depreciation
$4,792
-
10c · Land, buildings and equipment, net
beginning of year $10,352 · end of year $12,306
-
11 · Investments: publicly traded securities
beginning of year $12,449,378 · end of year $0
-
12 · Investments: other securities
end of year $0
-
13 · Investments: program-related
end of year $0
-
14 · Intangible assets
end of year $0
-
15 · Other assets
end of year $500,105
-
17 · Accounts payable and accrued expenses
beginning of year $191,457 · end of year $545,211
-
25 · Other liabilities
beginning of year $5,259,802 · end of year $483,825
-
27 · Net assets without donor restrictions
beginning of year $7,768,032 · end of year $10,933,932
-
28 · Net assets with donor restrictions
beginning of year $770,208 · end of year $675,786
Mission and programs · 2024
Mission
to reduce societal-scale risks associated with artificial intelligence AI by advancing safety research, building the field of AI safety researchers, and promoting safety standards.
-
Compute Cluster: CAIS runs an initiative to provide free compute for research projects in ML safety, based on a cluster of 256 A100 GPUs with dedicated support staff to enable non-industry researchers to conduct advanced AI safety research requiring cutting-edge models. Since launching in 2022, the CAIS Compute Cluster has become a cornerstone of global AI safety research. By 2024, more than 400 researchers had used the cluster to conduct safety-focused ML research, generating 121 research papers and accumulating over 5,000 citations. The cluster continues to remove financial and technical barriers for non-industry researchers, enabling cutting-edge experimentation through free access to compute.
Expenses $2,947,497 · Revenue $256,598
-
Research: CAIS conducts foundational research aimed at mitigating societal-scale risks posed by artificial intelligence. We develop technical benchmarks and methods which improve AI safety. We also examine AI safety from a multidisciplinary perspective that incorporates safety engineering, complex systems, international relations, and other disciplines. In 2024, CAIS made major strides in foundational AI safety by developing new tools to measure and mitigate national-security risks posed by advanced models. This work included releasing the WMDP Benchmark, the first public dataset for evaluating hazardous knowledge in AI systems; creating circuit breakers, a defense mechanism that reliably prevents harmful outputs even under adversarial attacks; and coordinating Humanity's Last Exam, a global collaboration of nearly 1,000 contributors from more than 500 institutions across 50 countries to assess frontier-level reasoning across 3,000 expert-level questions. CAIS researchers also published 8 papers over the year.
Expenses $1,168,082
-
Expenses $874,948
-
Advocacy: CAIS works to bring AI safety research into practice through engagement with industry leaders, policymakers, and research labs, aiming to build awareness and establish standards for safe AI development and deployment. CAIS saw significant growth in public engagement, expanding its AI Safety Newsletter to 24,000 subscribers, a nearly threefold increase from the prior year, and contributing to over 100 media stories in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Through research translation, public communication, and collaboration with academic and industry partners, CAIS helped elevate AI safety as a mainstream concern and provided technical grounding for ongoing policy discussions at both state and federal levels.
Expenses $777,874
-
Field Building: CAIS builds and strengthens the AI safety research community through various initiatives designed to provide support and lower barriers to entry. In 2024, CAIS expanded its field-building initiatives by making AI safety education more accessible and interdisciplinary. We published the textbook Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics & Society, and launched an accompanying online course that enrolled 240 students from varied academic backgrounds. CAIS also strengthened community engagement by hosting workshops at major conferences including NeurIPS, where our workshop on agentic AI systems accepted 34 papers, and organizing AI safety socials at ICML and ICLR with 200+ researchers participating. The SafeBench competition, supported by Schmidt Sciences, attracted nearly 90 benchmark submissions to advance empirical AI safety evaluations.
Expenses $520,385
As filed on the 2024 return. The filer continues this part on Schedule O, which is not shown here.
Listed in Part VII
-
Daniel James Hendrycks
Executive Dir.
- Total calculated
- $321,283
- From this org
- $314,534
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $6,749
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $314,534
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- not reported
- Nontaxable benefits
- $6,749
- Filer's total
- $321,283
-
Nicholas Beckstead
Policy Lead
- Total calculated
- $212,529
- From this org
- $198,071
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $14,458
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $198,071
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $7,808
- Nontaxable benefits
- $6,650
- Filer's total
- $212,529
-
Steven Basart
Research engineer
- Total calculated
- $192,121
- From this org
- $171,272
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $20,849
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $171,272
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $7,200
- Nontaxable benefits
- $13,649
- Filer's total
- $192,121
-
Bri Treece
COO
- Total calculated
- $182,075
- From this org
- $169,980
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $12,095
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $169,980
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $6,815
- Nontaxable benefits
- $5,280
- Filer's total
- $182,075
-
Oliver Zhang Managing Director
Director
- Total calculated
- $167,824
- From this org
- $155,573
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $12,251
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $155,573
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $6,223
- Nontaxable benefits
- $6,028
- Filer's total
- $167,824
-
William Hodgkins
Project Manager
- Total calculated
- $163,513
- From this org
- $150,379
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $13,134
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $150,379
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $6,038
- Nontaxable benefits
- $7,096
- Filer's total
- $163,513
-
Long Phan
Research Engineer
- Total calculated
- $152,654
- From this org
- $143,070
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $9,584
- Hours/week
- 40
Schedule J breakdown matched by us
- Base
- $143,070
- Bonus
- not reported
- Other
- not reported
- Deferred
- $3,200
- Nontaxable benefits
- $6,384
- Filer's total
- $152,654
-
Alice Gatti
Research Engineer
- Total calculated
- $143,723
- From this org
- $131,032
- From related orgs
- $0
- Other
- $12,691
- Hours/week
- 40
-
Rune Tybirk Kvist
Director
- Total calculated
- $0
- Hours/week
- 1
-
Jaan Tallin
Director
- Total calculated
- $0
- Hours/week
- 1
Compensation is as filed in Part VII: reportable pay from this organization and from related organizations, other compensation, and hours per week. The total, marked calculated, is our sum of the three dollar columns, with a blank column counted as $0; the form itself has no total. On a Form 990-EZ the columns are Part IV's instead, and on a Form 990-PF Part VIII's — compensation, contributions to benefit plans, and expense account — and the total sums those. A Schedule J breakdown is as filed: base pay, bonus, other, deferred compensation and nontaxable benefits from this organization, with any from related organizations beside each, and the filer's own total. It is shown with the Part VII listing of the same name on the same return. The form gives no key between the two, so that pairing is ours, and is marked matched by us.
Schedule J
Answered yes
- 3 · Independent compensation consultant
- 3 · Form 990 of other organizations
- 3 · Written employment contract
- 3 · Compensation survey or study
- 3 · Approval by the board or compensation committee
- 8 · Paid under the initial-contract exception
- 9 · Followed the rebuttable-presumption procedure
Answered no
- 4a · Severance or change-of-control payment
- 4b · Supplemental nonqualified retirement plan
- 4c · Equity-based compensation arrangement
- 5a · Pay contingent on this organization's revenues
- 5b · Pay contingent on a related organization's revenues
- 6a · Pay contingent on this organization's net earnings
- 6b · Pay contingent on a related organization's net earnings
- 7 · Other non-fixed payments
The filer's explanations (Part III)
- Part I, Line 8: Amounts reported on 990 VII pursuant to initial contract exemption described in Regs
- The organization hired the Chief Operating Officer and the highest compensated employees (together listed as employees #3 - #7) pursuant to written employment contracts. At the time of hire, these individuals were neither directors, officers, nor otherwise disqualified persons with respect to the organization and were not in positions to exercise substantial influence over its affairs. The contracts' terms were fixed and specified all elements of compensation including salary, benefits, and any potential bonus arrangements. The contracts were negotiated at arm's length before the individuals began providing services to the organization. The organization's board reviewed comparable compensation data for similar positions at comparable organizations before approving the contract terms. Since these agreements represent the initial contracts between the organization and these employees, and the employees were not previously in positions to exercise substantial influence over the organization's affairs, the fixed payments under these contracts are subject to the initial contract exception under Treasury Regulations section 53.4958-4(a)(3).
Part I's answers as filed. A line not listed was left unanswered; on lines 1a and 3 that means the box was not checked.
Grants on this return
No itemized grants to organizations on this return.
Provenance
- Return type
- form_990
- Tax year
- 2024
- Filed
- 17 November 2025
- IRS schema version
- 2024v5.2
- Source object
- 202503219349323615
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