This article may incorporate text from a large language model .(December 2024) |
Company type | Private |
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Founded | 1 December 2015 |
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Headquarters | Redwood City, California, United States |
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Website | chanzuckerberg |
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetime. [1] [2] [3] The CZI is legally set up as a limited liability company (LLC) that can be seen as a for-profit charity and is an example of philanthrocapitalism. CZI has been deemed likely to be "one of the most well-funded Philanthropies in human history". [4] Chan and Zuckerberg announced its creation on 1 December 2015, to coincide with the birth of their first child. [1] Priscilla Chan has said that her background as a child of immigrant refugees and experience as a teacher and pediatrician for vulnerable children influences how she approaches the philanthropy's work in science, education, immigration reform, housing, criminal justice, and other local issues. [4]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's main areas of work include Science, Education, and Justice and Opportunity, which focuses on promoting housing affordability, criminal justice reform, and immigration reform. The mission of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is to "build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone" [5] and to "advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy". [1]
In 2017, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pre-leased a 102,079 square foot portion of the new Broadway Station development in downtown Redwood City, California where it is headquartered. [6]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invested $24 million in Andela, a startup focused on training software developers in Africa through a boot camp and four-year fellowship program that pairs their trainees with U.S. companies needing development help. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative led the company's Series B funding. [7]
In September 2016, Indian education startup Byju's's announced raising $50 million in a round co-led by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Sequoia Capital, along with investors Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Times Internet. The funding has been raised to fuel their international expansion. [8] [9]
On 6 March 2018, the Harvard Gazette published that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative would pledge $30 million to the Reach Every Reader project. Both Harvard's President Drew Faust and MIT's President L. Rafael Reif were quoted in the article, as were Priscilla Chan, HGSE Dean James E. Ryan, and MIT's Sanjay Sarma, VP for Open Learning at MIT, and others. The article states: "To make significant progress in early literacy at scale, the team will engage in a rigorous, scientific approach to personalized diagnosis and intervention. They will develop and test a scalable, web-based screening tool for reading difficulties that diagnoses the underlying causes, and a set of targeted home/school interventions that change the way we approach intervention for young children with reading difficulties." [10]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is supporting the development of a civic tech talent pipeline by funding Coding it Forward. [11]
The Initiative has funded a free online learning platform, Summit Learning, that is based on a personalized learning philosophy. The use of the platform in some schools has led to concerns about efficacy and student privacy. [12]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has funded a number of small-scale, grassroots initiatives to better understand the "physical, mental, social and emotional health and development of students as a way to improve academic success," as well as new efforts to make Native American or Black culture more embedded in students' curriculums. Chan said, "We have to be really thoughtful about how we can be helpful and build a collective community alongside others and behind practitioners and school leaders," and that educational initiatives must be responsive to local needs because "there is not one thing that's going to solve everything." [13]
In May 2022, the Chan Zuckerberg initiative announced grants totaling more than $4 million in support of education communities. The grants will support a range of professional learning, mentoring, and wellness practices to support teacher retention. The grants include $1 million donations to FuelED, The Teacher Well, Profound Gentlemen, and $500,000 to Profound Ladies and Black Male Educators Alliance of Michigan. [14]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation and other philanthropic, business, and health organizations, created the Partnership for the Bay's Future in 2019 to "preserve, produce, and protect affordable housing". The Partnership includes a $500+ million fund for subsidized affordable housing units in the Bay Area, as well as grants for local governments and community organizations to work together to pass local housing legislation that protects tenants and promotes affordability. [15]
On 1 October 2018, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced it was helping to launch Opportunity Insights, a new non-partisan, not-for-profit research and policy institute focused on improving economic opportunity led by Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Nathaniel Hendren, leading economists from Harvard University and Brown University. The research aims to "better understand the drivers of poverty as well as solutions that can foster greater economic mobility and security for more families". [16]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative supported the failed campaign for the 2020 California Proposition 15, which would have adjusted the original 1978 California Proposition 13 by raising large commercial property taxes. [17]
In addition, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative opposed the failed 2020 California Proposition 20, a measure which would have led to stricter sentencing and parole laws. [18]
Following electoral defeats of CZI-backed initiatives in 2020, the CZI announced a restructuring that would no longer fund political campaigns directly. [19]
In September 2016, CZI announced its new science program, Chan Zuckerberg Science, with $3 billion in investment over the next decade, with Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University announced as the first president of science, to begin 1 October 2016. The goal of the program is to help cure, manage, or prevent all disease by the year 2100. $600 million of the $3 billion would be spent on Biohub, a location in San Francisco's Mission Bay District near the University of California, San Francisco, to allow for easy interaction and collaboration between scientists at University of California, San Francisco; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; and other universities in the area, as well as engineers and others. [20] [21] Commentators saw the move as audacious but a worthwhile goal, while noting that the amount of funding is small relative to overall money spent on biomedical research. [22] [23] This funding is equal to roughly 2% of the NIH budget earmarked for basic research over the same time frame. [24] Any patents generated at Biohub would be jointly owned by Biohub and the discoverer's home institution. [25]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's first acquisition took place in January 2017 with the acquisition of Meta, a Toronto-based artificial intelligence scientific literature search engine that helps scientists collaborate on solutions and accelerates the dissemination of new scientific research. [26] On October 28, 2021, CZI announced the sunset of Meta, with a proposed shutdown date of March 31, 2022. [27]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was a founding sponsor of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Toronto's MaRS Discovery District in March 2017. [28]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invested heavily in coronavirus research and response following the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The organization has contributed multiple grants to various universities and partnerships studying how the coronavirus spreads and possible treatments or vaccines. The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub partnered with Stanford and UCSF to help to significantly increase free testing in the Bay Area starting in March 2020. [29] In April 2020, CZI joined the Government of the United Kingdom and Madonna in pledging funding for the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a public-private partnership led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and Mastercard. [30]
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub announced in July 2020 that it would partner with all 58 California county departments of public health to provide free genomic sequencing of positive coronavirus samples to better understand how the virus is spreading and inform policy decisions. [31] [32]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has also invested in the development and maintenance of open-source scientific software, with a pledge of US$40 million over 3 years for its Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program. [33] CZI's Open Science program also supports the preprint servers medRxiv and BioRxiv." [34] [35] Grants included support to projects such as ScientificPython and the visualization library matplotlib. [36] [37] Besides directly funding projects, CZI's Open Science division organizes workshops with grantees and stakeholders outside the United States to foster "global participation in open biomedical research". [38]
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not a charitable trust or a private foundation but a limited liability company, and is therefore not a tax-exempt organization as many philanthropies are. As an LLC, the organization has more flexibility in how it addresses its goals, and can invest in for-profit startup companies, [39] [40] can spend money on advocacy initiatives and lobbying, [39] [41] can make political donations, [39] [41] [42] does not have to disclose the pay of its top five executives [41] and has fewer other transparency requirements compared to a charitable trust. [39] [40] [41] [42] Under this legal structure, as Forbes wrote it, "Zuckerberg will still control the Facebook shares owned by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative". [41] [42] The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative publicly lists its grants, a level of transparency not required for an LLC. It has pledged to release software developed by it or its grantees under open-source licenses. [43]
Sean Parker is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and was the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also co-founded Plaxo, Causes, Airtime.com, and Brigade, an online platform for civic engagement. He is the founder and chairman of the Parker Foundation, which focuses on life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement. On the Forbes 2022 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked No. 1,096 with a net worth of US$2.8 billion.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder. Zuckerberg has been the subject of multiple lawsuits regarding the creation and ownership of the website as well as issues such as user privacy.
Philanthrocapitalism or philanthropic capitalism is a way of doing philanthropy, which mirrors the way that business is done in the for-profit world. It may involve venture philanthropy that actively invests in social programs to pursue specific philanthropic goals that would yield return on investment over the long term, or in a more passive form whereby "social investors" benefit from investing in socially-responsible programs.
The Priscilla Chan and MarkZuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG) is a public hospital in San Francisco, California, under the purview of the city's Department of Public Health. It serves as the only Level I trauma center for the 1.5 million residents of San Francisco and northern San Mateo County. It is the largest acute inpatient and rehabilitation hospital for psychiatric patients in the city. Additionally, it is the only acute hospital in San Francisco that provides 24-hour psychiatric emergency services.
Dustin Aaron Moskovitz is an American billionaire internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana with Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes reported Moskovitz to be the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, on the basis of his then 2.34% share in Facebook. As of June 2024, his net worth is estimated at US$23 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is a donor-advised community foundation serving the Silicon Valley region. It is the largest charitable foundation in Silicon Valley.
Meta ULC was a Canadian unlimited liability corporation performing big data analysis of scientific literature, which was acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and shut down in 2021, effective in 2022.
The Breakthrough Prizes are a set of international awards bestowed in three categories by the Breakthrough Prize Board in recognition of scientific advances. The awards are part of several "Breakthrough" initiatives founded and funded by Yuri Milner and his wife Julia Milner, along with Breakthrough Initiatives and Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
Priscilla Chan is an American pediatrician and philanthropist. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015 with a pledge to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at $45 billion. She attended Harvard University and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco.
bioRxiv is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, or simply Biohub, is a nonprofit research organization. In addition to supporting and conducting original research, CZ Biohub acts as a hub and fosters science collaboration between UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford. The Biohub is funded by a $600 million contribution from Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. It was co-led by Stephen Quake and Joseph DeRisi from its inception in 2016 until 2022, when Quake left to become president of the Biohub Network. Sandra Schmid joined as Chief Scientific Officer in 2020.
Andela is a private marketplace for technical talent. Andela focuses on sustainable careers, connecting technologists with long-term engagements, access to international roles, and competitive compensation.
EducationSuperHighway is a United States nonprofit organization that directs research and provides advocacy and consultation services to states and school districts in order to connect American public school classrooms to high-speed internet. The organization was founded by Evan Marwell in 2012 with the goal to ensure all American classrooms are connected with the FCC-recommended minimum speed of 100 kbit/s per student. In 2013, EducationSuperHighway raised $9 million in funding led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Startup:Education fund, with additional funding coming from the Gates Foundation. The organization has published a yearly State of the States report that compiles data from the FCC's E-Rate program and helps to connect schools with the funding offered by ERate.
Byju's is an Indian multinational educational technology company, headquartered in Bengaluru. It was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath. As of October 2024, various media outlets reported that Byju's valuation has now plummeted to zero, down from its peak valuation of $22 billion in 2022. In April 2023, the company claimed it had over 150 million registered students.
Alexander Marson is an American biologist and infectious disease doctor who specializes in genetics, human immunology, and genome engineering. He is the Director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology, and a tenured Professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Twelve is a chemical technology company based in Berkeley, California. They develop technology to convert CO2 into profitable chemicals, such as plastics and transportation fuels. Currently, the company uses metal catalysts to produce synthetic gas (syngas), methane, and ethylene.
The Human Cell Atlas is a global project to describe all cell types in the human body. The initiative was announced by a consortium after its inaugural meeting in London in October 2016, which established the first phase of the project. Aviv Regev and Sarah Teichmann defined the goals of the project at that meeting, which was convened by the Broad Institute, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wellcome Trust. Regev and Teichmann lead the project. As of 2024, the project has mapped approximately 62 million human cells into 18 biological networks, which includes cells from vital systems such as the nervous system, lungs, heart, intestine and immune system.
Amy Elizabeth Herr is an American professor. She is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is attached to the Department of Bioengineering. At Berkeley she was also the founding executive director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub. Herr is a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator and the Chief Technology Officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, a fellow of both the National Academy of Inventors and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, as well as a co-founder of Zephyrus Biosciences, a biotechnology company that was acquired by Bio-Techne.
Peter J. Turnbaugh is a microbiologist and a professor at University of California, San Francisco. He is known for his research on the metabolic activities performed by the trillions of microbes that colonize humans' adult bodies. Turnbaugh and his research group use interdisciplinary approaches in preclinical models and human cohorts to study the mechanisms through which the gut microbiome influences nutrition and pharmacology.