Estonian engineer and investor Jaan Tallinn made sizable donations in cryptocurrencies to the UK-based technology company Faculty AI, according to Fortune.
According to the publication, one of the co-founders of Skype donated 350 ETH to the firm in January 2018 worth about $434,000 at the time, and in March 2020 — 50 BTC valued at approximately $316,000. The donations have only become public recently.
Tallinn previously invested in Faculty AI in a seed round through his investment company Metaplanet Holdings, which owns 9% of the British firm’s shares.
Tallinn made the donation to Faculty AI to study the risks associated with artificial intelligence technologies in the field in which he himself works.
The reason the investor paid in cryptocurrencies is that he holds a large portion of his personal wealth in these assets. Converting to fiat money would require paying capital gains tax and would reduce the amount transferred, Tallinn explained.
According to Fortune, his fortune was valued at $900 million in 2019. Tallinn sold his stake in Skype in 2005. Forbes notes that he also did fairly well on early investments in the company DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014 for about $600 million.
Faculty AI helps build machine-learning systems for companies and governments. Lately, the firm has often been likened in the press to the American data-analytics company Palantir due to its work with the UK authorities, Fortune noted.
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