Astera Institute

The Astera Foundation centrally supports operational and financial aspects of Neuro-AI, Science, and Strategic Investments. This approach allows our more technical efforts to be run like ambitious, fast-paced start-ups led by critical, specialized talent. Our team also leads Astera’s Residency program, supports independent Fellows, explores and funds new opportunities, and drives events and other ecosystem-supporting efforts. We think about grants and investments as a continuum rather than a binary. Most foundations have an external grant-making function. At Astera, we also do grants when appropriate, but we believe we can increase philanthropic capital efficiency by structuring some of our programmatic expenditures as investments. With a grant, we lose 100% of our capital 100% of the time—with investments, sometimes we return capital that we can then redeploy for philanthropic purposes. For-profit companies are a major vector for social and technological change, and a tool that nonprofits can use to achieve their charitable objectives. By removing the artificial constraints most foundations erect internally between grant-making and investment functions, we hope to make our existing philanthropic dollars go farther.