Max Tegmark → Future of Life Institute
Board / officer service
2024
Overlapping board or officer service in 2024 filing. Current role labels are in the node note.
Scientific prominence joined to organizational leadership and policy access
Max Tegmark
Max Tegmark is a physicist and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, identified by FLI as its founder and chair. He brings scientific prominence to AI-risk advocacy and holds institutional roles that connect public arguments, philanthropic governance and access to political audiences.
Tegmark’s public role in AI risk is anchored in the Future of Life Institute, which identifies him as founder and chair. FLI combines catastrophic-risk research, policy work and public communication. Its institutional resources allow that work to continue across news cycles, with Tegmark’s scientific reputation helping bring the questions before broader audiences.
The financial and corporate records put him inside the organizational structure too. The investigation found overlapping board or officer service between FLI and Lightcone Foundation in the 2024 filings, alongside a foundation-board role in FLI Europe’s founding notice. These records help explain how a family of organizations holding substantial resources is governed. Lightcone Foundation’s grants are a major component of FLI’s reported 2025 finances.
His political access is also visible. Contemporary reporting places him at Bernie Sanders’s April 29 AI panel, which brought Chinese and American computer scientists into a discussion of AI threats. That appearance sits within a broader field in which FLI, MIRI and ControlAI seek to make catastrophic-risk arguments central to public decisions about development.
Tegmark’s importance is thus both communicative and institutional. A scientist speaking about a risk can attract attention; a chair working through a staffed and funded organization can help sustain research, convene discussion and advance a policy agenda. The network becomes easier to understand when those capacities are seen together and tied to the actual organizations through which he works.
Our people ↗FLI 2024 IRS return ↗FLI 2025 audited financial statements ↗Swiss founding notice reproduced by Moneyhouse ↗Contemporary report of Sanders’s April 29 AI panel ↗
Assessment updated 2026-09-12
Detailed records and research
What the records show
Max Tegmark → Future of Life Institute
Founder and Chair
2026-09-11
FLI's current roster names Max Tegmark Founder and Chair.
Max Tegmark → Future of Life Institute Europe
foundation board member with joint signature by two
Founding notice2022-04-21; not certified-current
Signature rule does not establish appointment or grant-approval powers What remains unestablished: Signature rule does not establish appointment or grant-approval powers
Max Tegmark → Sanders’s US–China AI panel — April 29
Participated in AI-risk panel
2026-04-29
Contemporaneous reporting identifies Max Tegmark as a participant in Sanders's April 29 panel.
Max Tegmark → Lightcone Foundation
Board / officer service
2024
2024 IRS-derived Lightcone officer record; full Lightcone schedules not obtained.
Max Tegmark → Sanders’s planned Senate AI briefing
Reported scheduled participant
2026-09-09; 2026-09-16
Axios identifies Tegmark among planned expert participants.
From the investigation
Tegmark and Lightcone follow-up — 5 September 2026
Tegmark's February2 2026 Canadian parliamentary appearance supplies direct evidence of advocacy for mandatory safety testing while favoring beneficial AI tools. Other empirical claims in that testimony were not validated by this follow-up; testimony proves what a witness argued, not the accuracy of every assertion. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/451/ETHI/Evidence/EV13876654/ETHIEV25-E.PDF
Read the research & sources ↗Tegmark and Lightcone follow-up — 5 September 2026
Tegmark is currently identified as FLI founder and chair, and its biography describes ongoing AI research. FLI's current published AI position calls for a frontier-experiment pause and an ASI moratorium of at least15years. The page bears a2024 publication stamp but does not establish when that specific wording was adopted. Treat this as the organization's current position, not an independently established technical conclusion or a ban on all AI. https://futureoflife.org/person/max-tegmark/ https://futureoflife.org/our-position-on-ai/
Read the research & sources ↗Entity and governance resolution
FLI: Future of Life Institute, EIN 47-1052538, Pennsylvania legal domicile, formed 2014, section 501(c)(3). The 2024 return reports five voting board members, two independent, 29 employees. It identifies Anthony N Aguirre, Mihaela Chita-Tegmark, Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn and Viktoriya Krakovna as directors/officers. Current website presents the same five under current names/roles: Anthony Aguirre (President and CEO), Jaan Tallinn (director), Max Tegmark (Founder and Chair), Meia Chita-Tegmark (Board Secretary), Victoria Krakovna (director). These are different date states, not contradictory office labels. S1, S11.
Read the research & sources ↗No donation bridge established in the checked records
FEC Schedule A — C00411330 / MOSKOVITZ / 2025–2026 · FEC Schedule A — C00411330 / TEGMARK / 2025–2026 · FEC Schedule A — C00411330 / TALLINN / 2025–2026 · FEC Schedule A — C00411330 / TUNA / 2025–2026
Read the research & sources ↗Further reading
Read the original sources 3
See the connections
Open this part of the network ↗What the connections say
6 relationshipsMax Tegmark → Board / officer service → Future of Life Institute
2024
Overlapping board or officer service in 2024 filing. Current role labels are in the node note.
Read the original source 1
Max Tegmark → Board / officer service → Lightcone Foundation
2024
Reported by the cited source
2024 IRS-derived Lightcone officer record; full Lightcone schedules not obtained.
Read the original source 1
Max Tegmark → foundation board member with joint signature by two → Future of Life Institute Europe
Founding notice2022-04-21; not certified-current
Reported by the cited source
Signature rule does not establish appointment or grant-approval powers
What remains unestablished: Signature rule does not establish appointment or grant-approval powers
Read the original source 1
Max Tegmark → Participated in AI-risk panel → Sanders’s US–China AI panel — April 29
2026-04-29
Reported by the cited source
Contemporaneous reporting identifies Max Tegmark as a participant in Sanders's April 29 panel. Public participation; no drafting, payment or official regulatory authority established.
Read the original source 1
Max Tegmark → Reported scheduled participant → Sanders’s planned Senate AI briefing
2026-09-09; 2026-09-16
Reported by the cited source
Axios identifies Tegmark among planned expert participants. Scheduled participation reported; completed attendance and bill drafting unverified.
Read the original source 1
Max Tegmark → Founder and Chair → Future of Life Institute
2026-09-11
FLI's current roster names Max Tegmark Founder and Chair. Institutional role is distinct from the capacity in which he participates in a particular briefing.