Innovation Needs More than Intelligence | Taylor Tondelli

0:00Welcome to Foresight Institute Radio. Today's guest is Taylor Tondelli. Taylor's talk makes the case that intelligence, whether human or AI, is not sufficient on its own to produce innovation. What matters alongside it, the right conditions, incentives, institutional scaffolding, and diversity of perspective that allow intelligent systems to generate genuinely new things. The talk works through what those conditions look like and where they tend to break down. This talk is from Vision Weekend Puerto Rico held in February 2026. Vision Weekend is where we gather leading builders, thinkers and funders in AI, bio, nano, neuro and space to celebrate technological progress and explore how to advance it for the betterment of life. If you want to join a future Vision Weekend, details and upcoming dates are at Foresight.org. This intro was recorded using an AI-generated version of Alice in Dutman's voice. We hope you'll enjoy the episode. Hello. I am Taylor Tondelli.

1:02And I want to inform you guys about something you may not know about, which is a huge pool of funding that many of you, I would venture to guess most of you are not thinking about right now. And that is philanthropic capital. So innovation needs more than intelligence. I attended the conference yesterday and was very impressed by so many hyper smart, clever individuals here today. And I want to make sure that you guys are able to innovate and build your products and tools with a heart-centered approach in a values-aligned way. And if you want to move in that direction, there is a lot of funding out there for you. So, where money meets meaning? Pre- 2025, the U.S. government was our biggest venture capitalist.

2:07It was funding R&D programs. It was funding things like the National Renewable Energy Lab. It was fun. You know, the DOE, the EPA, all of these wonderful government subsidies were going to innovation and early stage tech. In my space, I'm specifically looking at clean technologies and renewable energy stuff. But we all know what happened. A lot of that funding was cut. A lot of that funding was even clawed out of people's city bank accounts. And I'm not here to make a political statement. These are just what happened. So, I work with a network of philanthropic foundations and impact investors. And a lot of folks came knocking on their door asking them to now fill in the gap of this big chunk of funding that is no longer available to new technologies. So, I want to let you in on how much does philanthropy actually give away? What does philanthropy actually fund? And how can you all access it?

3:11I just pulled this because I found it very telling. This is a headline from a venture capital website. And this is a headline from one of my clients who's a climate works foundation, their website. Just to illustrate what is the focus of investment dollars from VCs? Well, it's revenue. It's, right? We know that. What is the focus of philanthropic dollars? Impact. So, what is philanthropy? Philanthropy can be broadly defined as love for humankind. It's derived from the Greek words, philos which means loving and anthropose which means humankind. So, philanthropy have a lot of money. And this $600 billion is only considering the amount of money they grant each year.

4:12So, not to be deductive, but we understand that grant dollars are basically free money that they're not asking for a return on or they're not asking for equity in your company. These are purely philanthropic dollars. And they give them to people who are values aligned or who are solving issues for humankind or for planetary health, not based on valuations. So, when we look at this huge pool of money, and I looked into how much is going to early stage innovation, only about 5% of that $600 billion is going to people like you guys in this room right now. That's pretty low. And I want to help you access more of that. What's important to understand if you are curious about shifting maybe your approach to fundraising and looking more at accessing philanthropic dollars is know that there's a different target.

5:14There's a different goal. They're not looking for a unicorn. They're not looking for the most clever product. They're looking for ecological repair, social justice, and climate solutions. They're looking to measure impact. So, what are they asking if you were to walk into Rockefeller Foundation and talk to them about their grant program? What do they want from you? They want to know who's going to benefit. They want to know who is harmed if we don't act. Does this shift power or reinforce it? And that one is huge right now with AI. I work with about 260 foundations. They are very concerned about the consolidation of power right now. They are very concerned about the deterioration of democracy and the rise of autocracy. And they are very well financed groups that hold a lot of money.

6:14And they are talking behind closed doors on how to prevent consolidation of power with their capital. And they want to know does it heal people, places, or systems? So, this is impact capital with a conscious. Innovation without integrity is just acceleration. I don't mean that to be provocative. But this is what philanthropy is trying to solve for. So, they understand that markets are exclude and further marginalize typically underrepresented groups. And they understand that nature has no balance sheet. If your technology does not serve people or planet, philanthropy will not fund it. And so, I want to offer this as an opportunity for you all in the room who are building amazingly innovative, clever, smart technologies.

7:19There is a way in which you can get out of the cycle of, and I know this because I had a startup clean tech company here that was doing vertical access wind turbines and pitched my deck to many investors. There is that cycle where you need to prove the scale. You need to prove how fast they'll get their returns, how much revenue. And you have to give away some of your company in the form of equity in order to get that investment. But there is a way where you can actually take a heart-centered approach. Think about how you can build a better planet, a better future for humans, animals, and nature, and still be financed to build that thing. Because some things are too important to wait for profit. So, if you're interested in accessing philanthropic capital, I would recommend you know your values and act in accordance with them and put those first,

8:23build with integrity. And this is an important one. Let communities lead. So, I'm not sure how familiar you're all with a community-based approach, but basically, considering the end user, the end beneficiary, in the design phase of whatever you're building. So that you don't have blind spots where you're accidentally excluding people or further exasperating social inequalities. And be accountable to more than your cap table. That will attract philanthropic capital. Do not treat impact as a branding exercise, optimize for growth at the expense of people, claim neutrality when harm is possible, or promise scale without governance. And that's all I have for you. I just want to, I hope I planted a seed and a few brains out there that if you lead more from a place of integrity and values alignment, there is a space for you to attract a lot of funding for your project. Thank you.

9:31And thanks for sight. Please, Dean. Do we have questions? Perfect. And also, it's so true you have to lead from the heart. When we think of philanthropic funding, often we'll think of the NSF NIH SBIR programs, right? This feels more like a black box. How do you even get started with approaching that? I hope you also think of four site programs. When making this presentation, I thought about doing seven minutes just on the nitty-gritty details of how to access funding. But I thought that was too in the weeds. And I'd rather focus on this like overarching philosophy. But there are many funding vehicles out there. For many types of programs, typically I'll be very brief. The philanthropy will grant money to a re-granter or to let's say an accelerator program who then that those dollars flow into a

10:34clean tech company, a startup program. But there are so many creative ways to get that catalytic capital for early stage companies. And if you want to know more, I'm happy to talk to you after. Yeah. So I have a question about the audience size. So they have a philanthropist who has a certain amount of money and they want to affect people. Are they looking for a size at a break-even point? Or are they looking for the most bang for the butt? I'm sure that they might. But on the other hand, there are some things that are very important that may not serve a smaller audience. So what are they looking for? Thank you for the question. Every foundation has its own mission statement. There are some that are focused on racial equity. There are some that are focused on climate mitigation and some that are focused on a tiny little niche thing like water, aquifours, reserves under the ground. So what are they looking for? It, unfortunately,

11:34there's no one-size-fits-all. Philanthropy are looking for this. It's individually focused, depending on the foundation. I know that's an lame answer, but that's just what it is. So if you're looking for something niche that might only serve as a small group of people, I think that maybe out there you just have to look into, you just have to research it. And the best way to engage with philanthropy, although often they release RFPs or calls for proposals, you can start a dialogue with them. And sometimes there's back channel opportunities for grants that aren't published to the wider society. And so I would encourage you to figure out what philanthropy is outlined with your thing and engage with them that way. I don't need the mic for my voice. Oh, go ahead. Yes. I think you best in all ear, me. I mean, in Puerto Rico here, the people who are here for the tax act, which is between

12:373,000 and 5,000 people, each of us, we to donate $10,000 of beasts to Puerto Rican not profits, which gets me thinking about the mandate of charitable Remaker trusts and the mandate of certain for-profit companies that need to offset their own tax vise by finding alignments to donate their money to. Do you know of any marketplaces that match the amount of money that they need to get away to the opportunities? There are marketplaces. I'm not, I'm not familiar with a marketplace per say. But there are many re-granting institutions where you would donate to a non-for-profit. Not non-for-profit would be the funding vehicle for smaller-they would be a re-granter, essentially. In Puerto Rico, specifically, I can't say I'm super familiar. I want maybe P18

13:37or the Bravo Foundation are doing stuff like that. My friend Bernie would probably know more about that, possibly Gillian. But I guess is what you're trying to solve for how to get those dollars to the- Yeah, I just believe that there's probably a lot of money that does not beg it into the hands of non-profits because they, there, there's a mismatch. They don't even know that it exists. Yes, I know. There's always others. I bet you someone here could fill that. I think you're right. Let's get that going. Let's make that happen because that's a good idea. Marketplace. Perfect. Thank you very, very much. Thanks for listening to ForSight Radio. To explore our work from upcoming events to our grant programs, visit ForSight.org. If you found this conversation useful, share it with someone who should hear it. Until next time.