The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a non-partisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. It is one of the largest philanthropic institutions in the USA. As of 31 December 2018, the foundation’s assets were approximately USD$9.8 billion.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative was initiated in 2014 with a commitment of USD$20 million to establish multidisciplinary cyber policy centres at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. The initiative was expanded in 2014 with an additional USD$45 million and renewed in 2017 through 2023, bringing the Foundation’s total commitment to this work to more than USD$132 million over 10 years. The overall goal of the Cyber Initiative is to support the development of thoughtful and multidisciplinary solutions to the challenges brought by emerging technologies (including AI), and to promote adequate policy approaches that benefit societies around the world.
The Foundation is explicitly agnostic as to specific policy outcomes, seeking only to build a field that can generate robust debate and analysis in order to stimulate better cyber policies in relation to emerging technologies. In the last year, the Foundation provided grants to Georgetown University’s CyberAI program and the American University Internet Governance Lab.
- Supports the development of thoughtful and multidisciplinary policy solutions to the challenges brought by emerging technologies.