Jaan Tallinn
Jaan Tallinn is Founding Engineer of Skype and Kazaa, Cofounder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and Cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, with over 25 years of experience in technology development and AI safety advocacy.
He is a prominent Estonian computer programmer, investor, and leading voice in existential risk research who has invested over $100 million in more than 100 technology startups while dedicating his resources to ensuring artificial intelligence develops safely for humanity.
Jaan currently serves on the AI Advisory Body at the United Nations, the Board of the Center for AI Safety, and the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is an active angel investor through Metaplanet Holdings, a partner at Ambient Sound Investments, and a former investor director of DeepMind, where he was a Series A investor and board member alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, before the company’s $600 million acquisition by Google in 2014.
Through his investment vehicle Metaplanet, founded in 2011, he backs mission-driven founders working on positively disruptive deep technologies, investing in roughly one new company per month with anywhere from $500,000 to several million dollars. Read Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn has invested over $130M in more than 100 tech startups.
As a founding engineer at Skype from 2002 to 2003, Jaan developed the peer-to-peer technology that revolutionized global communications, building upon his earlier work creating FastTrack and Kazaa for Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis while working as a stay-at-home father.
His P2P innovations at Kazaa were later repurposed to drive Skype’s architecture around 2003, establishing him as one of the foremost experts on peer-to-peer technologies. He sold his Skype shares in 2005 when eBay purchased the company for $2.6 billion. Jaan also led the Series A funding round for Anthropic, the AI safety-focused company founded by former OpenAI employees, where he now serves as a board observer despite expressing concerns about AI proliferation. Read eBay Inc. Reiterates ‘The Truth About Skype’ and Co-founder of Skype invested in hot AI startups but thinks he failed.
In 2012, Jaan cofounded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge with philosopher Huw Price and our cosmologist Martin Rees, providing an initial donation of approximately $200,000. The interdisciplinary research center focuses on studying and mitigating existential and global catastrophic risks. Read Could science destroy the world? These scholars want to save us from a modern-day Frankenstein.
He cofounded the Future of Life Institute in March 2014 with MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, UCSC physicist Anthony Aguirre, and others to steer transformative technology toward benefiting life and away from large-scale risks. Through these organizations, he has been instrumental in raising global awareness about AI safety, signing the March 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. Read Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter. Listen to Jaan Tallinn: Balancing AI Risk and Opportunity.
Jaan’s investment portfolio reflects his commitment to technological progress guided by safety considerations. His early investment in DeepMind, partly motivated by keeping tabs on AI development, proved prescient when Google acquired the company in 2014. He invested in the reversible debugging software Undo in 2014, backed British AI startup Faculty with cryptocurrency donations worth $450,000 in 2020, and invested in Estonian-American negotiation startup Pactum.
Other notable investments include Rain AI in healthcare technology and numerous blockchain and cryptocurrency ventures. His philosophy centers on redirecting money that doesn’t care about existential risks, although he has expressed disappointment that major AI labs continue to advance technology faster than safety measures can keep pace. Read Skype co-founder reveals he’s invested over $130 million into tech start-ups and He’s worried A.I. may destroy humanity. Just don’t confuse him with Elon Musk.
Before his work on file-sharing applications, Jaan cofounded Bluemoon Interactive in Estonia alongside schoolmates Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu. The company created Kosmonaut (later remade as SkyRoads in 1993), which became the first Estonian computer game sold abroad in 1989, earning $5,000.
By 1999, facing bankruptcy, Bluemoon’s founders took remote positions with Swedish telecommunications company Tele2 at $330 per day, working on the unsuccessful “Everyday.com” project. This experience in distributed teams and remote collaboration would later inform the development of Skype’s global communication platform. He also cofounded the personalized medical research company MetaMed in March 2013 with a $500,000 investment from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Read He Changed How We Talk to Each Other—And Didn’t Vanish Because He Was Outdated.
Jaan earned his Bachelor’s degree of Science in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tartu in 1996, with a thesis that explored traveling interstellar distances using warps in spacetime, demonstrating his early interest in transformative technologies. His academic background in physics has informed his systematic approach to understanding existential risks and the long-term trajectory of technological development.
Born on February 14, 1972, to an architect mother and a film director father, he gained access to computers at age 14 when a schoolmate’s father selected a group of students to work in his office, where Jaan met his future Kazaa and Skype collaborators.
From 2017 to 2019, Jaan served as a member of the High-Level Expert Group on AI at the European Commission, advising on AI strategy and ethics. He served on the Estonian President’s Academic Advisory Board, contributing to Estonia’s emergence as one of Europe’s most tech-forward societies.
His current board positions include the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where he helps assess nuclear and technological threats to humanity. He actively participates in the effective altruism movement, having donated over $1 million to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute since 2015 and supporting other existential risk research organizations, including contributions to Chatham House for their work on nuclear threats.
As a leading voice on existential risk, Jaan has given numerous high-profile talks at institutions including TEDx events, the Centre for Effective Altruism, MIT, and various AI safety conferences. His main concerns focus on artificial intelligence, unknown risks from technological development, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology, arguing that humanity is not allocating sufficient resources to long-term planning and mitigating civilization-threatening risks.
He frequently cites the one-in-six chance that humans won’t survive this century, as calculated by Oxford professor Toby Ord. Jaan’s views on AI alignment have been significantly influenced by the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky, and he maintains that no one working at AI labs believes the risk of next-generation models “blowing up the planet” is less than 1%.
Watch Jaan Tallinn: Fireside chat at EA Global 2020, Jaan Tallinn argues that the extinction risk from AI is not just possible, but imminent, Interview mit Jaan Tallinn (Pioneers’17), and Solving Global Coordination by Jaan Tallinn. Read Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn reveals the 3 existential risks he’s most concerned about.
Throughout his career, Jaan has received recognition for his contributions to technology and AI safety advocacy. His early work on peer-to-peer technologies, notably with Kazaa and Skype, resulted in what he considers the world record for software downloads, at nearly 500 million. His continued advocacy for AI safety has positioned him as one of the most influential voices in the field, with media requests and speaking invitations directed through the Future of Life Institute.
He has been featured in major publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian, discussing the trajectory of artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity’s future. Listen to Jaan Tallinn on AI safety – FT Tech Tonic.
As of 2019, Jaan is married with six children and resides in Tallinn, Estonia, where he continues his work as an investor and advocate for AI safety. His personal experiences as a father have made abstract existential risks more concrete, motivating his dedication to ensuring humanity’s long-term survival.
With an estimated net worth of $900 million as of 2019, he continues to deploy his resources strategically, backing founders whose work nudges humanity toward long-term success, while also supporting research organizations focused on mitigating existential risk. His investment philosophy remains focused on displacing capital that doesn’t consider long-term risks, though he has expressed increasing concern that voluntary governance schemes at AI companies are too fragile to ensure safety.
Watch Awakening the Machine: Jaan Tallinn, Jaan Tallinn Keynote: 2024 Vienna Conference on Autonomous Weapons, and AI and Value Alignment | Jaan Tallinn.
Listen to Skype and Kazaa co-founder Jaan Tallinn on AI and the Singularity and World of DaaS: Jaan Tallinn: Balancing AI Risk and Opportunity.
Read Jaan Tallinn’s 2023 Philanthropy Overview. Read Jaan Tallinn on the future of AI and A Skype founder on biomonitors, existential risk and simulated realities.
Visit his Wikipedia page, Crunchbase profile. Follow him on YouTube and BigThink.