Tyler Cowen is a Backer at ARC Prize Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing artificial general intelligence through enduring AI benchmarks. He is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and chairman of the Mercatus Center.

Cowen earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987 and has authored multiple bestselling books including The Great Stagnation and Talent. He co-founded the influential economics blog Marginal Revolution in 2003 with Alex Tabarrok.

Cowen was named to Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2011 and Prospect magazine's most influential economists in 2023. He hosts the acclaimed podcast Conversations with Tyler and writes a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion.

Cowen founded Emergent Ventures in 2018, an incubator fellowship program that has funded over 1,000 individuals across science, policy, and journalism. He contributed $50,000 as a backer to ARC Prize Foundation alongside major donors including xAI, Google, and Ndea.

Through Emergent Ventures, Cowen has distributed over $50 million in grants, including Fast Grants that supported COVID-19 research. ARC Prize Foundation's benchmarks are used by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI to measure progress toward AGI.