How AI’s New Millionaires Could Reshape Philanthropy

Summary

WSJ Tech News Briefing

Episode: How AI’s New Millionaires Could Reshape Philanthropy

Date: June 16, 2026
Host: Imani Moiz
Key Guests:

• Maddy Stanisiewski, Co-Founder, ElevenLabs
• Keech Hagee, WSJ Reporter

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into two interconnected tech stories: the challenges and risks of AI-generated voice deepfakes in the lead-up to the U.S. midterm elections, and how the wave of wealth from major AI IPOs could transform the philanthropic sector. The discussion features expert insights on efforts to prevent AI-enabled election misinformation and examines how the emergence of AI millionaires is shifting the landscape of charitable giving, with a particular focus on the influence of effective altruism and modern donor strategies.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Threat of AI-Generated Voice Deepfakes in Elections

[00:19–04:23]

Technological Progress and Concerns

• Host Imani Moiz outlines the emerging risk of AI-generated deepfakes in U.S. elections, highlighting the rapid advances in voice cloning technology.
• The segment features an interview with Maddy Stanisiewski of ElevenLabs, who discusses industry efforts to curb misuse.

ElevenLabs’ Defensive Measures

• Watermarking and Moderation:
  • “All the content is watermarked. We moderate content, we block voices. So you cannot even create those voices… you are completely blocked from any method of trying to create that voice today.”
    —Maddy Stanisiewski [01:55]
• Voice Similarity Detection:
  • ElevenLabs employs algorithms to detect and block voice clones that match public figures or candidates.
• Collaborating with Candidates:
  • “We can collaborate with anyone… But then the wider side… there’s open source technology, there’s wider set technology that can do that without any safeguards… our biggest competition today is from Asia from companies that don’t follow any of those rules.”
    —Maddy Stanisiewski [02:47]

Industry Challenges and Global Competition

• Lack of Standardization:
  • The effectiveness of safeguards is limited by other companies (especially open source and international competitors) that do not implement safety measures.
  • Maddy emphasizes the need for industry-wide standards like watermarking:
    • “I would love for watermarking to be a requirement for people to adopt… but our biggest competition today is from Asia from companies that don’t follow any of those rules.”
      —Maddy Stanisiewski [03:12]
• Need for Unified Detection Tools:
  • “There needs to be a unified layer of detecting for human, detecting for AI and then assuming everything else is false…”
    —Maddy Stanisiewski [03:31]
• Optimism About Societal Resilience:
  • Despite the risks, Maddy expresses belief that society can develop protective measures quickly:
    • “I both feel we will get there quickly enough of the society to be able to protect against those bad actors…”
      —Maddy Stanisiewski [04:08]

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2. The Coming Wave of AI Wealth and Philanthropy

[05:51–10:44]

AI IPOs as Philanthropy Engines

• Lead-in: Following recent and upcoming IPOs by AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI, a new generation of tech wealth is emerging, accompanied by a unique philanthropic outlook.

Scale and Speed of Wealth Creation

• “It’s just so much money. But also it’s about the technology that is creating the wealth. AI is different than what came before, and the people that are interested in AI are often younger...”
  —Keech Hagee [06:40]
• Charities could see “not just billions, but tens of billions of dollars flowing into charities.”
  —Keech Hagee [07:12]

Distinct Values and Priorities: Effective Altruism

• Many AI founders are influenced by effective altruism—a data-driven approach to maximizing the impact of charitable dollars.
• This likely means more giving to causes like global poverty, AI safety, and animal welfare.
  • “We don’t know that a good amount of the money will go to charities that use this lens for how to decide where the money should go… global poverty, going to AI safety, animal welfare…”
    —Keech Hagee [07:24]

Unique Generational Attitudes

• AI founders are often younger and embrace an urgency to direct wealth toward social good, especially with their focus on possible transformative future events like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• “For some of those folks, it’s important to get their wealth out into the world as soon as possible, because money might not even matter once AGI happens.”
  —Keech Hagee [06:56]

Commitment to Charitable Giving

• Anthropic’s seven founders have committed to giving away about 80% of their wealth, a notably high pledge compared to tech peers.
  • “80% is a lot. And to do it right at the outset of becoming wealthy at the very beginning of an IPO is really new for it to be happening at this scale.”
    —Keech Hagee [08:51]

Popular Giving Strategies: Donor Advised Funds (DAFs)

• DAFs allow donors to receive immediate tax benefits, with actual donations to charities spaced over time.
  • “A donor advised fund is a place where you can, as a donor, put your money and get the tax benefit right then that year… but you get the tax break up front. So it’s a really attractive way of giving for donors who aren’t totally sure exactly where they want every penny to go.”
    —Keech Hagee [09:20]
• “So it’s tax break first, cause second.” —Imani Moiz [09:46]
  • “Yeah, basically.” —Keech Hagee [09:49]

Societal Impact of Tech-Driven Philanthropy

• Historical philanthropic waves from tech IPOs (e.g., Gates, Zuckerberg) have reshaped global health and the nonprofit infrastructure supporting AI safety.
• This new AI wealth could have a similar, or even greater, shaping effect on society, based on the issues prioritized by this cohort.
  • “Folks who don’t just give money to, like, do good, but are really reshaping society along the issues that are important to them… this could really change the entire texture of culture in those places.”
    —Keech Hagee [10:17]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "All the content is watermarked. We moderate content, we block voices. So you cannot even create those voices…" —Maddy Stanisiewski, on ElevenLabs’ safeguards against election deepfakes [01:55]

• "I would love for watermarking to be a requirement for people to adopt…" —Maddy Stanisiewski, on the need for industry-wide standards [03:12]

• "It’s just so much money. But also it’s about the technology that is creating the wealth. AI is different than what came before…" —Keech Hagee, on what makes this philanthropy wave unique [06:40]

• "For some of those folks, it’s important to get their wealth out into the world as soon as possible, because money might not even matter once AGI happens." —Keech Hagee, on AI founders’ philanthropic urgency [06:56]

• "80% is a lot. And to do it right at the outset of becoming wealthy at the very beginning of an IPO is really new for it to be happening at this scale." —Keech Hagee, on Anthropic founders’ giving pledge [08:51]

• "A donor advised fund is a place where you can, as a donor, put your money and get the tax benefit right then that year…" —Keech Hagee, on why DAFs are popular [09:20]

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [01:35] — Deepfake voice risks in U.S. midterm elections
• [02:45] — ElevenLabs’ technical and ethical safeguards
• [03:20] — Global challenges in content moderation and open source tools
• [06:40] — Keech Hagee on the scale and motives behind the new AI-driven philanthropy
• [07:24] — Effective altruism’s expected influence on charity recipients
• [08:51] — Anthropic’s founders and the 80% giving pledge
• [09:20] — Mechanisms and tax advantages of donor advised funds
• [10:17] — Broader social consequences of tech-driven philanthropy

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Episode Tone

The discussion is urgent, insightful, and forward-looking—balancing technological optimism with real-world risks and complexities. There’s a pragmatic view of philanthropy’s tax and impact motives, and a genuine curiosity about how these new fortunes might shape society’s fabric.

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Summary Takeaways

• The proliferation of AI-generated deepfakes represents a unique threat to elections, with companies like ElevenLabs at the forefront of defensive innovation and advocacy for industry standards.
• Upcoming AI IPOs are minting a new wave of young, idealistic millionaires who are likely to wield philanthropic influence shaped by effective altruism and a sense of global urgency.
• The methods and causes of giving are evolving, with donor advised funds and data-driven criteria likely to play a major role.
• The ultimate impact is uncertain, but past tech-driven philanthropy suggests this new cohort could reshape the nonprofit sector—and broader society—at unprecedented scale.

Transcript

[Caroline Roach]

Many companies are struggling to scale their AI deployments or even move them past the pilot stage. Often the problem isn't technology, but organizational misalignment around goals, processes and incentives. At the break, join Caroline Roach, senior Partner, IBM Consulting to learn why.

[Imani Moiz]

Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Tuesday, June 16th. I'm Imani Moiz for the Wall Street Journal. AI is already showing up on the campaign trail as new tools make it easier to create freakishly conduc convincing deepfakes. We'll hear from the co founder of one of the world's leading voice cloning companies about how it's trying to combat election misinformation. Plus, nonprofits are hoping new riches tied to massive AI IPOs will lead to new benefactors. We'll look at how the next wave of tech IPOs could reshape the charitable sector. But first, the technology behind AI generated voices is improving rapidly. And with the US midterm elections quickly approaching, so are concerns about how the tools could be misused. From fake robocalls to fabricated candidate endorsements, experts have warned that realistic voice clones could become a powerful tool for spreading misinformation. UK based conversational AI company Eleven Labs, which was valued at $11 billion this year, says it's working to stay ahead of the problem. Last week during London Tech Week, co founder Maddy Stanisiewski spoke with our colleague Luke Vargas about the risks and possible solutions.

[Luke Vargas]

We're five months out from the US Midterms. Obviously a fake AI voice in a presidential election is very concerning though. There's two candidates, right? People kind of know these figures, the midterms, hundreds of races, right? State, local, many more potential voices that could be spoofed to give someone an edge. How are you going to try and stop that?

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

So on the ElevenLabs side, all the content is watermarked. We moderate content, we block voices. So you cannot even create those voices. Even if you are a lookalike, you cannot do that. So you're completely blocked from any method of trying to create that voice today

[Luke Vargas]

based on the content of what someone wants to have a voice say is that how would you block. If I just want to have a voice that happens to sound like my opponent in a race saying they endorse.

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

And so yeah, so you need to create that voice so we effectively detect similarity to the voice of one of the candidates and block it.

[Luke Vargas]

So does that candidate have to upload their voice in to say we make

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

sure that this is the case for all those elections events?

[Luke Vargas]

That's good. Like all these Races. I'm just curious how deep that penetrates. Is it just senators and governors? Are we going down? If someone wants to protect themselves as a candidate in a local race estate raise, can they reach out to you?

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

Yeah, we can collaborate with anyone. Of course on the levelab side we feel confident that it's going to be good. But then the wider side, and that's where we see most of the models, there's open source technology, there's wider set technology that can do that without any safeguards, any provenance, any mechanism. And that's where frankly I am worried of how this will evolve. We are trying to collaborate with uk us AI security institutes to protect against this. I would love for watermarking to be an requirement for people to adopt, but our biggest competition today is from Asia from companies that don't follow any of those rules.

[Luke Vargas]

This was the case with fake video and photos in the last election, right? That Adobe is saying hey, we monomarked this stuff, you can spot it. But if you're not using that platform then have at it. Right? Create something and cause chaos.

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

I know we can do more. We are collaborating on releasing a lot of the detection models to that ecosystem. We collaborate with both universities and governments on creating that. And I think there needs to be back to one of the parts. There needs to be a unified layer of detecting for human, detecting for AI and then assuming everything else is false to be able to combine the promise and the benefit of technology with the bad actors that we always try to abuse them.

[Luke Vargas]

It sounds risky because you know how good those bad actors technology is, right? These open source, you have a product that I know you're proud of and that has a lot of differentiating features from open source voice models. But their voice tech is pretty good, right? And it could be used for ill.

[Maddy Stanisiewski]

It's pretty good. However, I both feel we will get there quickly enough of the society to be able to protect against those bad actors and ultimately from our partners, our customers. There's the same ambition to get a benefit but protect against the bad.

[Imani Moiz]

That was ElevenLabs co founder Maddie Stanisiewski speaking with our colleague Luke Vargas. Have you ever seen a post on your social media feed that you thought was real only to later realize it was AI generated? We want to hear from you. What did you see? Why did you believe it? How did you feel afterwards? Shoot an email to tnbsj.com or leave us a voicemail at 212-416-2236. That's 212-416-22, 3, 6 or if you're a listener on Spotify, drop us a comment in this episode. You may hear yourself on the show and we may reach out to you to hear more about your experience. We hope to hear from you coming up. AI IPOs are creating a growing class of millionaires, but the biggest winners might not be who you think. More after the break.

[Caroline Roach]

Delivering real business results with AI starts with organizational alignment, says Caroline Roach, senior partner, IBM Consulting.

You need to understand what problem you're solving, really commit yourself to it, and then be clear on how you're going to change the way you work to deliver those outcomes. With AI as a tool, but not

the only tool, if deployments aren't optimized to how work gets executed, ROI can suffer as programs stall and adoption lags.

Alignment is difficult to achieve because people are rushing to a solution without first defining the problem.

[Imani Moiz]

Like SpaceX last week, upcoming IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to mint more tech. Millionaires and billionaires and nonprofit fundraisers are preparing their pitch decks. Writing big checks can come with big tax savings, making charitable giving a key consideration for employees who suddenly find themselves in a very different income bracket. San Francisco donors already give more than three times the national average to charity, according to Fidelity. But the sheer scale of wealth being created by AI could usher in a new class of philanthropists with a distinct point of view. WSJ reporter Keech Hagee joins us now to explain. So, Keech, we've seen tech fortunes create massive philanthropic efforts before, from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg. What's different about this new generation of AI wealth?

[Keech Hagee]

Well, partly it's just the scale of it. It's just so much money. But also it's about the technology that is creating the wealth. AI is different than what came before, and the people that are interested in AI are often younger, and there's a good number of them that see the development of artificial general intelligence as something that's going to happen really soon. And for some of those folks, it's important to get their wealth out into the world as soon as possible, because money might not even matter once AGI happens.

[Imani Moiz]

Can you give us a sense of scale here? Just how much money are charities expecting to flow their way?

[Keech Hagee]

Yeah, we've talked to experts who say that we could be looking at not just billions, but tens of billions of dollars flowing into charities.

[Imani Moiz]

Do we have a sense yet about where specifically this money may be going or what types of charities?

[Keech Hagee]

We don't know. But there is a lot of overlap between this world of effective altruism and some of these AI companies, particularly OpenAI and really anthropic is like the one most closely associated with it historically. Some of the founders of that movement, some of them actually work at the company now. So it's sort of expected. We don't know that a good amount of the money will go to charities that use this lens for how to decide where the money should go. A lot of that stuff means going to global poverty, going to AI, safety, animal welfare. These are some of the really popular issues that effective altruists in the past have supported. So it's a good guess that a lot of it might go there, but we don't know yet.

[Imani Moiz]

You mentioned effective altruism. Can you explain what that movement is and what does it mean for charities right now?

[Keech Hagee]

It's sort of a data driven cousin of utilitarianism that is powered by this idea of earning to give so you can take a really high paying job. And the important thing is to use that money to go toward charities and specifically charities that are effective. So your dollar goes the absolute farthest that it possibly can. And you kind of using like math and data skills to assess that. And a lot of the people who developed AI are close to this movement or sort of adjacent to it, especially those who built the companies OpenAI and Anthrop.

[Imani Moiz]

Your story mentions that the seven founders of Anthropic plan to give away about 80% of their wealth. How unusual is it for founders to pledge to donate the majority of their wealth?

[Keech Hagee]

We do have this famous thing of the founders pledge, right, the giving pledge that folks like Bill Gates have signed. But broadly speaking, for this kind of wealth, you know, 80% is a lot. And to do it right at the outset of becoming wealthy at the very beginning of an IPO is really new for it to be happening at this scale.

[Imani Moiz]

Your story says that a lot of the giving will probably flow through donor advised funds. Can you walk us through exactly what those are and why they are so popular?

[Keech Hagee]

So a donor advised fund is a place where you can, as a donor put your money and get the tax benefit right then that year. And then it's up to the fund to decide where it goes. And things could sit in the fund for a good long time, but you get the tax break up front. So it's a really attractive way of giving for donors who aren't totally sure exactly where they want every penny to go, but they know, broadly speaking, they want to put it into charity.

[Imani Moiz]

So it's Tax break first, cause second.

[Keech Hagee]

Yeah, basically.

[Imani Moiz]

Why is it important for us to look at the impact of philanthropy from these AI companies?

[Keech Hagee]

I think the past waves of tech IPOs have really reshaped the world that we live in. If you think about like the Gates foundation, right? I mean, that's had a massive impact on global health in the global south, infectious diseases, things like that. And that was really, you know, Microsoft money. And if you look even at the Facebook IPO that gave us a whole world of philanthropy by Mark Zuckerberg, but also co founders like Dustin Moskowitz, who've helped build the entire infrastructure of AI safety, which has really shaped this AI revolution that we're in right now. So this new way could see a whole new generation of philanthropists on that scale. Folks who don't just give money to, like, do good, but are really reshaping society along the issues that are important to them. Yes, we've seen a big IPOs before, but this could really change the entire texture of culture in those places.

[Imani Moiz]

That was WSJ reporter Keech Hagee. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Imani Moiz for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

[Caroline Roach]

Scaling AI successfully requires more than the right technology. Here again is Caroline Roach, Senior Partner, IBM Consulting.

The biggest thing that we were talking about a year ago is what model to use. And the biggest thing that I'm talking about with my clients now is how do I drive change within my organization?

Companies able to identify correct and then avoid misalignment will be best positioned to deliver meaningful business value from AI.

The organizations that are the most successful set very clear targets and have several priorities that are very clear across the enterprise. The technology is really good, but if you're not changing your organizational alignment, not incentivizing your people correctly, not looking at workflows, you're not going to see real value with it.

Visit IBM.com think leadership to learn how building organizational alignment can help deliver AI deployments that scale and drive growth.

[Imani Moiz]

This content was created by custom content

[Caroline Roach]

from WSJ, a unit of the Wall

[Imani Moiz]

Street Journal advertising department.