By Mike Kubzansky, Omidyar Network CEO
Seizing the moment to shape the digital revolution
Digital technology is a powerful, ubiquitous force. Guided well, it makes wondrous things possible. Left unchecked, tech’s tendency to reinforce exclusion, division, and individualism will erode our shared humanity.
Each year that has gone by has made ever more apparent the central role that digital technology now plays in every aspect of human endeavor. As Adrienne LaFrance wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year, “Silicon Valley’s influence easily exceeds that of Wall Street and Washington. It is reengineering society more profoundly than any other power center in any other era since perhaps the days of the New Deal.”
With generative AI bursting onto the tech scene and increased attention to the societal benefits, dangers, and (non)governance of digital tech, there is an extraordinary, unique, and time-limited window — and imperative — to act now. Tech and its role in our society are fast moving, and yet critical questions remain unsettled, like “What are we willing to let AI do to/for us?”. Together, we can help answer them in ways that steer digital technology toward our shared humanity.
The story of our digital revolution is only just getting underway. It is not yet written. We — the people — are the protagonists. We have the collective imagination and agency to shape the path ahead so digital technology has a positive impact on our lives and livelihoods, our communities, and our society.
Evolving our strategy
That’s why Omidyar Network is evolving our strategy over the next six months (this is a sneak peek; there will be a bigger announcement in early 2025), sharpening our response to the rapid pace and scale of the newest digital technologies that are quickly transforming society, with an updated mission to bend the arc of digital revolution toward shared power, prosperity, and possibility. Our strategy is rooted in optimism, possibility, and a pragmatic acknowledgement of the massive, unbridled tidal force that has already flooded the lives of all Americans.
We’re moving from a three-pronged approach encompassing technology, the economy, and belonging to a laser-focused lens on technology’s role in society. This refined focus will allow us to concentrate our efforts where we believe we can make the most significant impact on one of the crucial issues defining the 21st century. We will work tirelessly to build momentum behind a hopeful pattern: bringing together diverse corners of society to forge the emerging rules, institutions, norms, and narratives that ensure digital technology serves the many, not the few.
Building on our legacy
In our twenty years, Omidyar Network has consistently evolved to change with the times. In fact, we aim to be a few steps ahead of the times. Our founders intended for Omidyar Network to be flexible and agile to meet the moment.
Whether it was leading the way on impact investing in the early aughts, to championing good digital ID and digital public infrastructure in the 2010s, to our most recent efforts to rein in unchecked monopolies and build greater connection and belonging in our world, we try to look around corners to help society channel and steer what’s coming next.
As we embark on this exciting new chapter, we remain grounded in our beliefs, our values, our worldview, and the work itself. We’re building on the solid foundation of our previous work, bringing forward many elements of Omidyar Network’s history that have had the greatest impact and filtering them through our new tech-focused strategy.
We will draw on our insights, tools, networks, expertise, and lessons learned from the past 20 years (and will be sharing that learning with you, too), as well as the past five years’ work to reimagine capitalism, build cultures of belonging, and create a more responsible technology system. This evolution and sharpening allow us to weave in essential threads from our work on economic inclusion and belonging while helping society adapt to the rapidly changing digital landscape. It also reflects our understanding that technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it’s deeply intertwined with our prevailing economic systems, private companies, and social structures.
At the same time, we’re reviving elements from our work prior to 2018, particularly our focus on investing in technology companies that have innovative ideas and governance models.
The road ahead requires new and deeper forms of solidarity, and collaboration will become an even bigger hallmark of our approach. We will build on the nearly 40 funder partnerships that we have developed and contributed to over the past several years, working across the public and private sectors, including civil society, investors, and communities historically excluded from the digital technology system.
Addressing the societal drivers of technology
We expect this work to span across four key drivers of technology: policy, markets, culture, and technology itself. A few examples of what this could include:
- Developing and implementing a comprehensive governance framework — including policies, laws, regulations, institutions, and accountability structures — with clear checks on power to responsibly steer digital technologies toward humanity’s shared interests and incredible possibilities.
- To spur innovation across the sector, this would also demand a stronger role for the public sector in building shared technology resources, whether through public assets, like the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot, public data sets, or public expenditure on research and development.
- We will build on our earlier work to enhance privacy and online safety, increase competition and innovation, pass thoughtful laws and frameworks, create essential digital public goods, support smart industrial policy and state assets, advocate for responsible open-source systems, protect kids online, and strengthen accountability.
- Promoting incentives, investment practices and vehicles, regulations, open collaboration, and best practices to drive companies, entrepreneurs, and investors to build better tech and better tech companies.
- We will advance our earlier efforts to encourage technology companies and their investors to incorporate ethical, multi-stakeholder considerations and societal impact alongside financial returns. We will also continue our endeavors to build worker power by increasing worker voice in tech development and adoption and renew our prior impact investing work that brings our values and beliefs into the companies that will shape the sector.
- This work also aims to properly value and uplift workers and communities alongside shareholders, so that all benefit from the increased economic productivity digital technology should bring. We want workers to have a seat at the table so they can help determine how technology is deployed in their workplaces.
- Cultivating a more inclusive and representative digital technology system by expanding who finances, creates, advocates, governs, and delivers it, so it can fully live into its incredible possibilities and provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people.
- We know the highest form of belonging is a feeling of ownership in shared outcomes. We will build on our work with Black and Brown founders, faith leaders, young people, artists, Indigenous communities, and beyond to ensure technology and tech policies are shaped by the many and not just the few.
- We need new and more diverse makers, coders, executives, founders, and board members; we believe this will produce digital technologies that are useful and relevant to a much larger swath of society.
- Building new and diverse coalitions that have the strength, resilience, and creativity to bend the arc of our digital future.
- The societal conversation on tech and tech policy has been limited to a relatively small set of practitioners and advocates, a much narrower set than tech’s reach would otherwise suggest. We aim to activate new voices, coalitions, and cultural narratives that will build shared agency across the many communities with a stake in shaping our tech system and create nuanced narratives that are neither fear-based, nor utopian.
This is just a glimpse of some of what we believe is possible with our new direction. We are being deliberately illustrative rather than definitive for two primary reasons. First, we are actively seeking collaboration to shape the specifics because we know we cannot and should not do this alone. Second, advances in technology are moving ever more quickly, and we want to maintain our ethos of being adaptable so we can take advantage of windows of opportunity when we see them opening. We will be sharing more details of our strategy in early 2025.
We also want to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the digital technology system and, while so many issues are critical, we cannot engage on everything that falls under digital tech. While we are still finalizing our strategy, we know we will not be funding areas like digital tech for Sustainable Development Goals or applications (e.g., to help nonprofits use tech better), nor will be focusing on digital-enabled adjacent technologies (e.g., gene editing, robotics, space exploration). It’s also important to note that we will continue to focus on spurring impact in the United States, while maintaining awareness of global developments. For more on what we expect to be in or out of scope, please see our FAQ.
Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging is unwavering. We strive to anchor it in our operations, our funding, and our work. As Our Vision for a Responsible Tech Future (published in 2022) stated, we strongly believe that if you change and diversify who is making tech, products, investments, and decisions, the rest of the system will shift positively with an injection of new perspectives, considerations, and worldviews.
Far too many segments of society — from America’s workers to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, women, younger generations, families, and faith communities — have had little to no say when it comes to the creation and societal consequences of digital technology. We aim to address this. We know that the workers most likely to be affected by automation tend to be people of color.
In our strategic orientation and goals, we will be deliberate and intentional about ensuring that people’s expertise, experiences, and outcomes in relationship with technology are our highest priority, not the tech itself. This will include, for example:
- New narratives about technology that position people — not technology — as the protagonists, anchored in a cohort of diverse, multi-disciplinary visionaries and voices.
- Movements, institutions, and governance models that broaden who sees themselves with the power to steer tech and shape policy.
- Building under-represented stakeholders equitably into accountability structures and decision-making bodies.
- Efforts to champion new and more diverse makers, funders, models, and technologies that provide alternatives to the status quo.
Evolving with care and responsibility
As part of this new strategy, we will be exiting or evolving our work in several spaces where our partners are making impressive and invaluable progress. We are committed to handling these transitions with care and respect, and our teams are already in conversation with partners. For organizations that will no longer receive grant support under the new strategy, we are making unrestricted general operating support grants designed to smooth the transition, and a quarter of our 2025 programmatic budget is earmarked for this purpose.
Certain areas of our work, like Cultivating Repair, which is focused on building a resilient system for repair and healing, will continue with its committed grantmaking as we prepare for it to become part of a bigger, catalytic field-led fund in the near future (which has been the plan from the outset).
Moving forward, together
We invite you to reach out with questions and ideas. Whether you’re a technologist, a policymaker, an investor, or simply someone who cares about the role of technology in our lives, we hope you join us in our pursuit.
We believe that, together, we can create a world where digital tech creates the conditions for shared power, prosperity, and possibility, where people are at the center of decisions — not products, ads, clicks, shareholders, chips, investors, or founders. Tech that serves all of us.
It’s an ambitious goal, but aiming high is one of philanthropy’s core obligations. It’s only together that we can bend the arc of our digital future toward shared humanity.
Questions? Check out our FAQ.
