Overview

• NextLadder Ventures unites five philanthropies, including the Gates Foundation, Ballmer Group, Stand Together, Valhalla Foundation and John Overdeck, with a $1 billion pledge over 15 years to develop AI tools for social workers, public defenders and other frontline professionals.
• Former Gates Foundation economic mobility director Ryan Rippel is CEO and a board of funder representatives plus three independents has been appointed to govern the new entity.
• Anthropic will provide around $1.5 million annually in technical expertise and access to its Claude language model to grantees developing case-management and resource-matching applications.
• The organization is still deciding whether to incorporate as a nonprofit or for-profit but plans to reinvest any returns from its grants, equity stakes or revenue-based financing into future initiatives.
• NextLadder’s approach follows guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Active Learning Network on ensuring AI reliability, explainability, bias mitigation and user collaboration in high-stakes settings.