High atop Salesforce Tower, a secret club for geniuses from two shadowy VCs
High atop Salesforce Tower, a secret club for geniuses
High above San Francisco, nestled in the clouds, sits the headquarters of a secret society meant to solve humanity’s most daunting challenges. You most certainly are not invited to the club — and you’re not supposed to know it exists. Behold the Institute. If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably because you possess something its founders covet: billions in your bank account, a bold-face name in an esoteric field, maybe a Nobel Prize.Located on the 59th floor of San Francisco’s tallest building, Salesforce Tower, the Institute has a sprawling 18,000-square-foot lounge designed by IwamotoScott Architecture and styled by John Terzian, the owner of a nightclub empire frequented by celebrities. The libraries, cafe, and bar in the stunning space have panoramic city views. Looking out at the tip of the Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower and Alcatraz in the distance, and the dazzling bay under the Golden Gate Bridge, one feels godlike.That is exactly what the Institute’s founders, venture capitalists Alexander Tamas and John Hering, intended. A modern twist on Enlightenment-era French and Viennese coffeehouses, where intellectuals gathered to discuss the issues of the day, the Institute pitches itself as a salon for great minds to tackle humanity’s biggest challenges. You won’t find Leon Trotsky or Simone de Beauvoir sipping cappuccinos in the lounge, discussing revolution and feminism. You might, however, find Sal Khan, founder of online educational platform Khan Academy, in an animated conversation with acclaimed chef Alice Waters, or Canada’s most decorated astronaut chatting it up with the United Arab Emirate’s artificial intelligence minister and the chief executive of Burning Man. It’s ambitious stuff, and while it may not be the lucrative venture its founders originally envisioned — an invitation-only clubhouse for the tech elite, who would pay handsomely for admission — it serves their decade-long quest to build social capital in the heart of Silicon Valley.Chef Alice Waters, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield are among the Institute's 75 fellows. | Source: Getty ImagesBehind closed doors Tamas and Hering have spent years trying to climb the tech industry ladder, sometimes in strange ways. Tamas, a German financier, is a former partner at DST Global, a Moscow-based investment firm founded by Israeli entrepreneur Yuri Milner that has close links to the Kremlin. Tamas led blockbuster investments in Facebook, Airbnb, and Twitter. In 2011, Tamas was named among the “most powerful people in tech you’ve never heard of” by venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. “He is Yuri Milner’s human supercomputer,” they wrote. “He’s on speed-dial for everyone trying to build the most successful, highest-scale, global Internet companies today.”The following year, Tamas, who had moved to Dubai, launched a global tech-focused hedge fund that didn’t take off. He pivoted to Silicon Valley and hired Hering, a USC dropout turned cybersecurity mogul, to help him run a venture fund, Vy Capital. Tamas and Hering agreed that if Vy Capital were to join the big leagues, they needed to make a splashy move. For their stage, they leased the 59th floor of Salesforce Tower, the 61-floor monolith that is the focal point of San Francisco’s skyline. Downtown brokers estimate that the space costs north of $100 a square foot, among the highest rent in the city. At that rate, annual rent would be about $2 million. But the lease was not intended for Vy Capital’s office — it was for a private club that Tamas and Hering planned to call 59. They planned to charge an initiation fee of $1 million, plus annual dues of $60,000, to mingle with “the world’s leading thinkers.” They tried to convince Sam Altman, who was running the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, to lease part of the floor for his startup OpenAI and become a founding member of the club. But Altman passed, and Tamas and Hering soon gave up on the idea, according to The Wall Street Journal. Having struck out with Altman, Tamas and Hering set their sights on another tech-billionaire whale: Elon Musk. Through extensive efforts by Hering to gain access to the funding rounds of Musk’s startups, Vy Capital was able to invest more than half of its reported $8 billion in assets in his companies. Hering found his way into Musk’s inner circle of advisors. Tamas, meanwhile, moved to Italy in 2022 and has told investors that Vy Capital is winding down operations. Think tank in the sky It’s unclear when the Institute opened, but its website appears to have launched in 2021. The Institute defines itself as a public-benefit think tank concerned with “advancing human progress” and working to “make the world a better place.” Instead of having to shell over $1 million for membership, 75 experts at the top of their fields have accepted invitations to serve as “fellows.”They include biochemist David Baker, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry; Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector turned human rights activist; and mushroom researcher Paul Stamets of “Fantastic Fungi” fame. Other fellows are distinguished writers, historians, musicians, scientists, and executives, selected “by the work they have done, the power of their ideas, and their commitment to solving the world’s problems,” the website states. The fellowship includes structured and unstructured time to spark creative thinking, according to the site, which doesn’t offer specifics about the time commitment. Nobel Prize-winning chemist David Baker, North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, and mushroom researcher Paul Stamets are fellows. | Source: Getty ImagesThe Institute is registered as a public benefit corporation, meaning it’s a for-profit business created to do social good. It doesn’t appear to have revenue sources, raising questions about whether Tamas and Hering are bankrolling it. The Institute’s focus areas range from transportation and climate change to human longevity and consciousness. The website includes reports on the future of artificial intelligence, urbanization, and biosecurity, but the audience for them is unclear. Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford who popularized the idea that superintelligent AI could destroy humanity, is a fellow at the Institute involved in initiatives on AI and biosecurity. In an email, Bostrom said the Institute brings together “an interesting and diverse group of people, and I think it’s great to encourage exchanges between individuals from different fields in a relaxed setting.” He added that he has yet to visit the headquarters in San Francisco. Other fellows contacted by The Standard did not respond or declined to comment. The Institute’s website makes no mention of its founders or origin story. Both founders declined requests to be interviewed. A spokesperson said Tamas and Hering “co-founded the Institute to facilitate open dialogue about the most important issues of our time.”“For this to occur, the discussions are held in an environment where confidentiality is key. Their hope is that these conversations challenge the status quo and result in tangible solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.” And if the assembled geniuses of the Institute don’t succeed at doing that, at least they can enjoy the views.