📨 AI for Social Impact 2025 Round Up

✍🏼 A Note From the Editor

2025 passed us by with lightning speed — and so it was with AI development, too. ⚡️ Here’s a 2025 round up of *some* of the AI advancements over the past year. Take a deep breath, read on, and prepare yourself to be thrust into yet another year that will bring even more rapid development and change.

🌀 AI Developments in 2025

• China released DeepSeek R1, an open-source reasoning model that matched OpenAI's capabilities for a fraction of the cost.

• OpenAI launched ChatGPT Deep Research to autonomously browse the web to generate cited reports on any topic, creating "expert-level" research analysis in minutes.

• Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the first "hybrid reasoning" model allowing users to toggle between quick responses and step-by-step thinking.

• The term “vibe coding” was coined by Andrej Karpathy, describing how AI tools now allow people without programming backgrounds to build applications with plain language prompts.

• Anthropic released Claude Code, an AI programming assistant to help developers (and non-tech folks too!) by generating code suggestions, debugging, and providing programming-related guidance directly in an IDE.

• Google Gems (likened to projects in Claude and ChatGPT) rolled out to all Gemini users for specific tasks with file upload capabilities and Drive-like sharing permissions.

• Meta released Llama 4, introducing multimodal capabilities (text, images, and more) in open-source models.

• ChatGPT and Claude added direct connectors into apps like Google Docs, Google Drive, Gmail, Notion, Asana, Salesforce, Quickbooks, Canva, and Slack.

• Perplexity released Comet, an AI browser.

• OpenAI released ChatGPT Atlas, an AI browser.

• Google launched Nano Banana, an image generation model in Google AI Studio.

• Microsoft expanded to include both OpenAI and Anthropic models in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

• Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, marketed as the “best coding model in the world.”

• OpenAI launched GPT-5 and then GPT-5.1 with fewer hallucinations and intelligent routing between reasoning and non-reasoning capabilities.

• Google Gemini 3 launched in November alongside Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.2.

• DeepSeek V3.2 closed the year matching GPT-5 performance while remaining open-source.

• Google announced Disco, its experimental AI browser. US-based folks can sign up for the wait list here.

• Data Center Investments: Amazon, $125 billion on AI data centers. OpenAI launched Stargate, a $500 billion data center project. Meta, $72 billion. Microsoft, $80 billion on data center projects worldwide. Alphabet is expected to spend up to $93 billion.

• AI Talent Poaching: Meta's new Superintelligence Labs triggered an industry-wide talent war, with the company offering up to hundreds of millions of dollars—including large cash bonuses and equity buyouts—to lure top researchers from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and rival firms, sparking reciprocal poaching that pushed AI talent compensation to record highs.

🌟 Better Late than Never

If you are still watching from the sidelines while Big Tech moves faster than ever, 2026 presents a massive opportunity for you:

→ While corporations built expensive AI infrastructure, social impact folks can now access similar capabilities, embedded in their existing tech stacks (ie Google Workspace, Microsoft Copilot, Salesforce's Einstein, Canva, etc.).
→ There are now many social impact-specific resources for structured learning: Anthropic's AI Fluency for Nonprofits course; Fast Forward's Nonprofit AI Policy Builder; NTEN's AI for Nonprofits Professional Certificate; NTEN and Technology Association of Grantmakers’ AI & Grantmaking Certificate.
→ Funders are beginning to realize the importance of embracing AI and putting real money towards nonprofit AI initiatives: Humanity AI, WIN Challenge, OpenAI for Nonprofits, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, among others.

If you're feeling behind on AI—you're not. You're right on time. 2026 is the year to get started. Happy New Year! 🎊

👋🏼 About AI for Social Impact

I’m Joanna, and I’m on a mission to help folks in the social impact sector understand, experiment with, and responsibly adopt AI. We don’t have time to waste, but we also can’t get left behind.

Let’s move the sector forward together. 💫

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