SneerClub

In December I asked who owns Lighthaven? since rationalist organizations were telling their members one thing and the taxman another. I now have a hypothesis.

Since 2022 the rationalists control a $20m event complex called Lighthaven in Berkeley. It is run by organizations with names like Lightcone Infrastructure or the Lightcone Project. They told the taxman that it belonged to CFAR in 2022, 2023, and 2024. CFAR listed a real estate asset and debt liability, so who was the counterparty? You might assume it was a bank, but you would be wrong.

Some facts came out when the FTX estate sued CFAR to recover money which Sam Bankman-Fried gave or loaned them. In 2024, the FTX trustees described the situation thusly:

The complaint alleges that Lightcone got another $20m loan to fund the Rose Garden Inn purchase from Slimrock Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-incorporated company owned by Estonian software billionaire, Skype inventor and EA/rationalism adherent Jaan Tallinn. This included the $16.5m purchase price and $3.5m for renovations and repairs.

Slimrock investments has no apparent public-facing website or means of contact. The Guardian emailed Tallinn for comment via the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit whose self-assigned mission is: “Steering transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.” Tallinn sits on that organization’s board. Neither Tallinn nor the Future of Life Institute responded to the request.

A loan usually comes with interest.

Also (Case 22-11068-JTD):

Throughout 2022, FTX Foundation and CFAR were in discussions to purchase the Rose Garden Inn in Berkeley, California as a retreat center for the Effective Altruist community. ... Lightcone RG closed on the purchase of the hotel on or about November 4, 2022. ... The property is subject to a deed of trust and assignment of rents in favor of Slimrock Investments Pte. Ltd., which provided Lightcone with a $20 million loan for the purchase and renovation of the property

Such a deed means that if Lightcone fails to repay the loan, Slimrock owns Lighthaven, much as when someone fails to pay a mortgage and the bank reposesses their house.

When people asked if this endangered the Lighthaven property, Habryka said:

100% of the equity in Lighthaven is owned by a Jaan Tallinn owned company, so it's not really at risk, though the details are a bit messy. I think it's a relevant consideration but not a big one compared to just basic profitability.

In late 2025 he threatened to sell Lighthaven if people did not donate several million dollars.

If we fundraise less than $1.4M (or at least fail to get reasonably high confidence commitments that we will get more money before we run out of funds), I expect we will shut down. We will start the process of selling Lighthaven. I will make sure that LessWrong.com content somehow ends up in a fine place, but I don't expect I would be up for running it on a much smaller budget in the long run.

To help with this, the Survival and Flourishing Fund is matching donations up to $2.6M at an additional 12.5%! This means if we raise $2.6M, we unlock an additional $325k of SFF funding.

SFF does not seem to actually control money, it just recommends that third parties donate money. One of these is probably the Survival and Flourishing Corp, a public-benefit corporation. "Our primary client is philanthropist Jaan Tallinn."

My hypothesis is that Lighthaven is security for a $20m loan from Tallinn's Slimrock company (much like a house is security for a mortgage). That means that donors to Lightcone pay Slimrock, and if they can't keep up Slimrock keeps $20m of freshly renovated real estate in Berkeley (or the value of selling that real estate). That would also imply that Tallinn is collecting tax deductions for giving to a charity whose greatest single expense is repaying money he lent them.