Dustin Moskovitz

Dustin Moskovitz
Born	Dustin Aaron Moskovitz 22 5, 1984
Birthplace	Gainesville, Florida, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Technology entrepreneur, philanthropist
Known for	Co-founding Facebook (now Meta Platforms), co-founding Asana, co-founding Good Ventures
Education	Harvard University (dropped out)
Spouse(s)	Cari Tuna
Awards	Youngest self-made billionaire (Forbes, 2011)

Dustin Aaron Moskovitz (born May 22, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded the social networking service Facebook — now Meta Platforms — alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes while a student at Harvard University. After serving as Facebook's first chief technology officer and later its vice president of engineering, Moskovitz departed the company in 2008 to co-found Asana, a work management platform, with former Facebook colleague Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes identified Moskovitz as the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, based on his then 2.34% ownership stake in Facebook. Alongside his wife, journalist-turned-philanthropist Cari Tuna, Moskovitz established the philanthropic organization Good Ventures, which has directed billions of dollars toward global health, poverty alleviation, criminal justice reform, and artificial intelligence safety. In 2025, he stepped down as CEO of Asana after thirteen years, transitioning to the role of chairman, having publicly reflected on the exhausting nature of executive leadership for someone who had never intended to manage people.

Early Life

Dustin Aaron Moskovitz was born on May 22, 1984, in Gainesville, Florida. He grew up in the North Central Florida area, where he attended local schools before pursuing higher education. Relatively little has been publicly documented about Moskovitz's childhood and family background compared to some of his Facebook co-founders. However, his early interest in technology and computer science would prove formative.

Moskovitz enrolled at Harvard University, where he was assigned to room with Mark Zuckerberg. This roommate pairing would have profound consequences for the technology industry. According to accounts of Facebook's early days, Moskovitz was one of the small circle of Harvard students directly involved in the creation and initial development of the social networking platform in early 2004. He did not complete his degree at Harvard, choosing instead to leave the university to focus on Facebook's rapid growth as the company relocated to Palo Alto, California.

The early formation of Facebook and the roles of its co-founders became the subject of considerable media attention and legal scrutiny. Moskovitz was among the original group that encountered the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, whose competing claims about the origins of Facebook would later become the subject of a high-profile lawsuit and the 2010 film The Social Network. Moskovitz himself later commented publicly on the film's portrayal of events, noting discrepancies between the dramatized version and his own recollections.

Education

Moskovitz attended Harvard University beginning in the early 2000s, where he studied economics. His time at Harvard coincided with a period of intense innovation in social networking technology among the university's student body. As a roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, Moskovitz became involved in the development of Facebook from its inception in February 2004. He ultimately dropped out of Harvard to devote himself full-time to the growing company, following Zuckerberg and other early team members to Silicon Valley. He did not return to complete his undergraduate degree.

Career

Facebook (2004–2008)

Moskovitz was one of five co-founders of Facebook, launched in February 2004 from a Harvard dormitory room. While Mark Zuckerberg served as the company's chief executive and public face, Moskovitz played a central technical role in the platform's early development and scaling. He has been described as Facebook's first chief technology officer, and he later served as the company's vice president of engineering.

During the company's formative years, Moskovitz was instrumental in building out Facebook's technical infrastructure as the platform expanded from a Harvard-only service to one available to students at other universities and eventually to the general public. The rapid growth of Facebook during this period — from a small campus project to a service with tens of millions of users — required significant engineering leadership, a role Moskovitz filled during the company's earliest and most critical growth phase.

In 2008, after approximately four years at Facebook, Moskovitz departed the company. He retained a significant equity stake; at the time of Facebook's IPO filing, his ownership was reported at approximately 2.34% of the company. This stake would later make him one of the wealthiest individuals in the technology sector.

Asana (2008–present)

After leaving Facebook, Moskovitz co-founded Asana in 2008 with Justin Rosenstein, a former colleague who had also worked at Google. Asana is a web and mobile application designed for team collaboration and work management, allowing teams to organize, track, and manage their projects and tasks. The company's origins were rooted in the observation, drawn from their experiences at Facebook, that a significant amount of workers' time was consumed by "work about work" — coordinating activities, managing communications, and tracking tasks — rather than the substantive work itself.

Moskovitz served as Asana's chief executive officer for approximately thirteen years. Under his leadership, the company grew from a startup into a publicly traded enterprise, completing its direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2020. Asana developed a platform used by organizations worldwide for project management and workflow coordination.

In October 2025, Moskovitz spoke publicly about his experience as CEO, describing the role as "exhausting" and revealing that he had never originally intended to serve in a management capacity. In interviews, he stated that he had envisioned himself as more of an "independent or head of engineering" rather than a chief executive who managed teams. He described the experience of presenting a confident front to employees and stakeholders despite personal discomfort, saying he had to "put on this face day after day." Moskovitz characterized himself as an introvert who found the social and public-facing demands of the CEO role draining.

By 2025, Moskovitz had transitioned from the CEO role to serve as Asana's chairman, maintaining his involvement with the company's strategic direction while stepping back from day-to-day executive responsibilities.

In an October 2025 interview, Moskovitz discussed the intersection of artificial intelligence, software as a service (SaaS), and AI safety as they related to Asana's future direction and the broader technology landscape. His comments reflected an ongoing engagement with questions about responsible AI development that also informed his philanthropic work.

Philanthropy and Good Ventures

Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, are among the most prominent philanthropists in the technology sector. Together, they co-founded Good Ventures, a philanthropic foundation established to deploy their wealth toward causes they identified as having the greatest potential for positive impact. The couple's approach to philanthropy has been strongly influenced by the principles of effective altruism, a philosophical and social movement that uses evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others.

Good Ventures has maintained a close partnership with GiveWell, a nonprofit organization that evaluates charities based on their cost-effectiveness and impact. This partnership, announced in 2012, allowed Good Ventures to leverage GiveWell's research to direct funds toward interventions in global health and poverty that demonstrated the strongest evidence of effectiveness. The collaboration also contributed to the development of the Open Philanthropy Project, an initiative that sought to identify outstanding giving opportunities across a wider range of cause areas, including those that were less well-studied.

The foundation's grantmaking has spanned multiple areas, including global health and development, scientific research, criminal justice reform, farm animal welfare, and biosecurity. A 2014 Washington Post profile examined the couple's methodical approach to charitable giving, noting their extensive research process before committing funds.

In a 2015 analysis, the Boston Consulting Group examined how technology entrepreneurs like Moskovitz were applying data-driven approaches to philanthropy, bringing the same analytical rigor used in building technology companies to the task of addressing social problems. Moskovitz and Tuna's model was cited as a prominent example of this emerging approach. Additional coverage in Inside Philanthropy highlighted Moskovitz's role in shaping a new generation of technology donors who sought measurable outcomes from their charitable investments.

By 2025, Moskovitz and Tuna had committed to giving away approximately $20 billion over the course of their lifetimes, placing them among the largest individual philanthropic commitments in history. A significant and growing portion of their philanthropic activity has been directed toward AI safety research. Forbes India reported in 2025 that Moskovitz and Tuna had been funding AI safety efforts long before the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought widespread attention to the risks posed by advanced AI systems.

Moskovitz and Tuna's approach has been informed by what Jewish Business News described as a "reasoned art of giving," in which the couple emphasized rigorous evaluation and a willingness to fund areas that other donors overlooked.

Political Activity

In September 2016, Moskovitz made headlines when he publicly announced his support for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, framing his decision as a response to the candidacy of Donald Trump. In a Medium post titled "Compelled to Act," Moskovitz outlined his rationale and pledged financial support to Democratic causes. The New York Times reported on the donation, noting its significance as one of the largest contributions from a Silicon Valley figure during the 2016 election cycle. CNN also covered the contribution, highlighting it as an unusual step for a technology billionaire who had previously maintained a relatively low political profile.

Personal Life

Moskovitz is married to Cari Tuna, a former journalist who worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal before devoting herself full-time to the couple's philanthropic work through Good Ventures and the Open Philanthropy Project. Tuna has served as president of Good Ventures and has been central to the couple's grantmaking decisions.

Moskovitz has described himself as an introvert, a trait he has discussed publicly in the context of his experience as a CEO. In 2025 interviews, he reflected on the tension between his natural disposition and the demands of executive leadership, noting that the role required him to adopt a public persona that did not come naturally.

Moskovitz has also written about his experiences attending Burning Man, the annual gathering in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. In a Medium essay, he explored themes of radical inclusion and radical self-reliance at the event, reflecting on the festival's communal values.

The couple resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Recognition

Moskovitz's most widely reported distinction is his identification by Forbes in March 2011 as the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. At the time, he was 26 years old, eight days younger than Mark Zuckerberg, and his wealth was derived primarily from his 2.34% ownership stake in Facebook. The Guardian reported on the Forbes ranking, noting that six individuals associated with Facebook appeared on the magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires that year.

As a co-founder of Facebook — a platform that fundamentally reshaped global communication and social interaction — Moskovitz occupies a position within a small group of individuals whose early work helped define the modern technology landscape. His subsequent founding of Asana placed him among a cohort of former Facebook employees and executives — sometimes referred to as the "Facebook Mafia" — who went on to start their own technology companies.

His philanthropic work has also attracted recognition. The scale of the giving commitment he shares with Cari Tuna — reported at approximately $20 billion — places the couple among the most significant philanthropists of their generation. Their focus on effective altruism and evidence-based giving has influenced broader conversations within the philanthropic sector about how to maximize the impact of charitable donations.

Legacy

Moskovitz's legacy spans three distinct areas: his role in the creation of Facebook, his founding and leadership of Asana, and his philanthropic work through Good Ventures.

As one of five co-founders of Facebook, Moskovitz was part of a team that built what became one of the most used internet services in history. While Zuckerberg has been the most publicly visible of the co-founders, Moskovitz's early technical contributions were essential to the platform's development during its critical growth phase from a Harvard dormitory project to a global platform. His departure from Facebook to build his own company reflected a pattern common among early employees of successful technology startups, carrying lessons and experiences from one venture into the next.

At Asana, Moskovitz built a company that addressed what he and Rosenstein had identified as a fundamental inefficiency in modern work: the amount of time spent coordinating and managing tasks rather than doing productive work. The company's growth into a publicly traded enterprise demonstrated the viability of this thesis. His candid 2025 reflections on the personal toll of CEO leadership — particularly for individuals who are introverted or who did not set out to be managers — contributed to a growing public conversation about the pressures of executive roles in the technology industry.

Through Good Ventures and their partnership with GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project, Moskovitz and Tuna have directed substantial resources toward causes they believe offer the highest return in terms of reducing suffering and improving human welfare. Their early investment in AI safety research — predating the widespread public awareness of AI risks that followed the release of ChatGPT — positioned them as among the first major philanthropists to treat the governance and safety of advanced AI systems as a priority. Their commitment to giving away the bulk of their fortune has made them one of the most consequential philanthropic partnerships in the technology sector.