Venture Facility for Public Benefit
Schmidt Futures drives discovery through investment in people, platforms, and partnerships. We aim to improve societal outcomes through the thoughtful development of emerging science and technologies that can benefit humanity.
To achieve our goals, we use a broad set of tools — including gifts, grants, investments, and startup activity — for charitable, educational, and commercial efforts with a public purpose. Our initiative brings together the efforts of various charitable and non-charitable entities to improve our potential impact by making diverse types of capital available to the efforts we support.
We serve as a “search function” for philanthropy, using science and technology to overcome failures in the development and scale of ideas, talent, platforms, policy, and entrepreneurship. We promote interdisciplinary, inclusive solutions and work with partners in everything we do. We encourage the development of network platforms and software. We support risk-taking and deploy all available types of risk capital.
Future-leaning
We seek to create the future, not restore the past. For example, embracing the inevitability of technological change, we look for machine learning solutions where there is a community benefit.
Risk Taking
We take the risks that only private philanthropy can take, providing early-stage funds broadly to new (and potentially competitive) efforts through a fast-launch venture model. We are creative in our approach, serving as an idea generator to test a number of ideas and identify those that work.
People-driven
Like effective venture facilities, we invest not only by thesis but also by team. In some cases, we start with a goal and then find the people, and in other cases we start by finding the best people and support them through multiple efforts or experiments.
Our People
We are a dedicated group bringing to bear new and creative ideas about how to tackle society’s long-standing challenges.
FAQ
More information about the mission of Schmidt Futures, how we are organized, and how we work to fulfill the vision of our founders.