Sacks predicted that the FTX collapse plus the failed OpenAI board coup against Sam Altman would “put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement”—i.e., effectively end effective altruism as a significant, credible force in tech and philanthropy.

Those events clearly did serious reputational damage. Coverage after FTX described EA’s reputation as badly tarnished and scrutinized its leaders for ignoring warnings about Sam Bankman‑Fried, and commentary around the OpenAI board fight explicitly framed it as a potential “final nail in the coffin” for EA‑style governance in tech. Some prominent EA‑adjacent institutions have also contracted or closed (e.g., Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute), and critics have published strong takedowns of the movement.(en.wikipedia.org) So the reputational hit part of his intuition was directionally right.

But the stronger part of the claim—that EA would cease to be a significant, credible force—has clearly not come true by late 2025:

• Major EA‑aligned philanthropy is still large and growing. Open Philanthropy (now rebranded as Coefficient Giving) is described as one of the world’s most influential philanthropies, has allocated over $4 billion since 2014, and is actively expanding via multi‑donor funds while keeping its cost‑effectiveness/“efficient giving” orientation that grew out of EA.(vox.com)
• Big tech/VC‑aligned funders are still writing very large EA‑motivated checks. Good Ventures (backed by Facebook co‑founder Dustin Moskovitz) continues to follow EA principles and, even after FTX and the OpenAI saga, recommended over $23 million in 2024–25 for the Centre for Effective Altruism and additional support for EA Funds’ operations.(goodventures.org) Open Philanthropy/​Coefficient Giving also launched a new three‑year, $120 million “Abundance and Growth Fund” in 2025 for housing and infrastructure policy, explicitly framed as part of the effective‑altruist “abundance” agenda and backed by donors like Stripe CEO Patrick Collison—hardly consistent with a dead or non‑credible movement.(bloomberg.com)
• The EA community and donor base remain large. As of April 2024, around 1,900 entrepreneurs had pledged roughly $10 billion through EA‑aligned pledge organizations, with about $1.1 billion already donated.(en.wikipedia.org) Giving What We Can, a flagship EA pledge nonprofit, reported nearly 9,000 members in 2024.(en.wikipedia.org) New EA‑style giving platforms such as Giving Multiplier continue to grow, facilitating thousands of donations and millions of dollars by 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• EA remains influential in tech‑adjacent domains, especially AI safety and long‑term risk. Open Philanthropy/​Coefficient Giving and Good Ventures are still funding AI‑safety fellowships, training programs, and research (e.g., Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator, ML4Good bootcamps, MATS scholars) well into 2025, and universities are publicizing new AI‑safety research grants from Open Philanthropy.(openphilanthropy.org) These are exactly the kinds of tech‑and‑philanthropy interfaces Sacks was talking about.

In short, EA has been dent­ed—funding from FTX vanished, some institutions closed or retrenched, and its brand is more controversial in parts of the tech world—but the core prediction that these episodes would effectively end its role as a significant, credible force in tech and philanthropy is not borne out by the continued scale of EA‑aligned money, organizations, and initiatives through 2025.

Given the strength of the original “nail in the coffin” framing and the available evidence by now, the prediction is wrong.