How Alexander Berger weighs the world’s biggest problems

[on-hold music] There is no shortage of problems in the world. That's one of the reasons I started this podcast. I wanted to step back from the endless stream of information, images, updates about things that are spinning out of control, crises that always seem to be several steps ahead of our ability to problem solve. I wanted to create a space for people, and frankly for myself, to be reminded that in the face of serious challenges, we are actually capable of deep thought and reflection, that there are people out there in the world doing that thinking, building movements and organizations, leading with real insight and intention. I wanted to open up the rooms and the minds where that thinking happens, and find a way to connect at a more human level with the people who are doing it. There's a big, difficult question that has to be answered first. Where should we begin? That's why I'm so excited to launch this podcast with a conversation with Alexander Berger. Alexander is the co-founder and CEO of Coefficient Giving, known until last year as Open Philanthropy. We covered a lot of ground [chuckles] in this interview, Coefficient Giving's Facebook founder origins and pretty extraordinary growth trajectory, the rise of AI, how you make decisions in the face of fundamental uncertainty. A lot of the conversation draws on a really thoughtful annual letter that Alexander put out earlier this year. But the reason I think it's a great starting point is that we focused quite a bit on that question of how to decide which problems are the right ones to tackle, the question of where to begin. Coefficient Giving brings a lot of rigor to those decisions, but it is also, at the end of the day, a surprisingly human process. I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you will, too. Here's Alexander Berger. Alexander Berger, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me, Michael.

So, um, 2025 was a big year for Coefficient Giving. Let's start there. Um, for one thing, you changed your name. Love to hear a little bit more about that. Um, but you also gave away more money than you ever have before, um, more than a billion dollars last year. And in your annual letter, you talked about how the plan is to do, um, quite a bit of hiring this year and give, you know, even more money away in 2026, 2027, 2028. Just by way of sort of an introduction, um, as to who and what Coefficient Giving is, you know, some folks might still know you as Open Philanthropy. Um, maybe you could put that growth trajectory in some context. Um, this is an organization that's been through a few evolutions. What is the current evolution? How would you describe where you are today?

Yeah, absolutely, and thanks again for having me. So, you know, when I look back on 2025, we did rebrand late in the year, and we used to be known as Open Philanthropy, and the key driver of that sort of choice to rebrand was because we're doing more and more work with other funders beyond the folks who we started with, um, this private foundation called Good Ventures, which was started by Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, and Dustin's one of the co-founders of Facebook. And so for, you know, most of our sort of