First, here's how much money is donated to charities and nonprofits focused on AI safety.
$1.3B2026 projectedThe majority of donor funding comes from Coefficient Giving. Together with Longview Philanthropy, Schmidt Sciences, and the Survival and Flourishing Fund, they make up 78% of all the funding in 2025.
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And how much are governments stepping up? ↓Governments aren't responding fast enough
$0.3B2026 projectedGovernment funding didn't arrive until the public started to understand the crisis - and even now, it can't move fast. While it has been increasing since 2023, it's still only about a quarter of what private donors give.
What about the labs' own safety efforts? ↓“Safety” teams at AI companies
$2–6B2026 projected, estimateLabs' safety teams exist to serve the labs. The majority of their work goes to making sure models don't cost the company money or reputation by creating explicit or illegal content, ignoring users' instructions or causing lawsuits. A small fraction goes towards the serious dangers that Nobel prize winners are warning about - like human extinction.
So just how much more is spent on making AI more powerful before we've made it safe? ↓Before you scroll, ask yourself how much you'd spend. Twice as much? Half? 10%?Safety doesn't make money for the labs. Power does.
So here's how much OpenAI alone spends on capabilities.
Add in DeepMind.
And Meta.
And Anthropic.
And xAI.
Once you add in everyone else - including Microsoft, Scale, Surge, Mercor and other contractors - all the safety spending is barely visible on our graph.
$100–150B2026 projected, estimateIn 2026, capabilities spending is projected to reach ninety-eight billion dollars - $98,000,000,000.
And the data centres being built for it? ↓