2025-11-17T14:05:43-08:00 2024-12-31 942861940 BREGANTE COMPANY LLP CPAS 50 CALIFORNIA STREET SUITE 1500 SAN FRANCISCO CA 94111 990 2024-01-01 825167508 THE EARTH SPECIES PROJECT EART 7074398688 8605 SANTA MONICA BLVD 78666 WEST HOLLYWOOD CA 90069 AZA RASKIN INTERIM CEO 2025-11-17 true true Jennifer L Ruth P00854240 4157771001 2024 2025-03-06 01:10:19Z AZA RASKIN 8605 SANTA MONICA BLVD 78666 WEST HOLLYWOOD CA 90069 20793212 false X WWW.EARTHSPECIES.ORG X 2018 CA The Earth Species Project (ESP)is the new frontier of interspecies understanding. We decode animal communication with advanced AI to illuminate the diverse intelligences on earth.Founded in 2018, Earth Species Project brings together the best of tech, nonprofit, and academia to shift the way humans relate to the rest of nature.We develop the worlds first and most capable large language models like AVES and NatureLM-audio for studying animal communication. Built on AI breakthroughs in human language and reasoning, our multimodal foundation models capture the complexity of the natural world and illuminate the languages hidden across the tree of life. To accelerate progress across the scientific community, we open source as much of our work as possible sharing datasets, benchmarks, and models to advance the study of animal communication. In collaboration with leading biologists around the world, were also using our models to study the vocal repertoire of crows, beluga whales, elephants, a 8 6 14 5 0 3444039 20597542 0 45855 164754 14689 30916 3504583 20793212 0 0 1738657 2350625 0 546710 1273681 2486497 3012338 4837122 492245 15956090 2446094 18409885 496591 504292 1949503 17905593 The Earth Species Project (ESP) develops frontier AI to amplify the voices of nature, creating new pathways for the transformation of our systemsand ourselves. We envision a relationship with the rest of nature that allows the diversity of life to thrive. false false 3829285 Organizational Growth and Development: Strategy Development and Theory of Change: In 2024, we developed a new organizational strategy that will guide ESP into the future by allowing us to advance not just the science of animal communication, but the broader change we hope to see in the world. The new strategy relies on three pillars to achieve impact: Research to Decode, Building The Field, and Preparing Society for Impact. Scaling our team: In 2024, we added six new full time employees bringing our total team to 23 across communications, research, and impact. Notably we brought on key leadership roles including Olivier Pietquin, our Chief Scientist and head of research, and Brittany Solano, our Director of Communications. Growing our board: Over the course of 2024, we worked actively working to grow our Board of Directors to better support our mission. This has led to us welcoming two visionary leaders to our Board of Directors in 2025: Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief who led the Paris Agreement, and Thomas Zurbuchen, former head of NASAs Science Mission Directorate. Their expertise and global perspectives strengthen ESPs ability to bridge frontier science, policy, and planetary stewardship.Research To DecodeESP is unique in building frontier AI models that can analyze data across taxa, helping to decode communication in species as diverse as birds and primates, cetaceans and insects. In 2024, we:Released NatureLM-audio, the first large audio-language model designed specifically for animal sounds. By unifying diverse bioacoustic tasks within a single, generalizable model, NatureLM-audio represents a major leap forward for AI-powered animal communication research. The paper was accepted to ICLR 2025, a prestigious AI research conference.Equipped the field with several new tools and benchmarks (e.g. BirdAVES, Biodenoising, and BEBE) designed to support the scientific community and demonstrate key capabilities in multimodal decoding.Progressed a range of decode projects with partners to discover the language of carrion crows, jumping spiders, and zebra finches, among others. Papers on these projects will be released in 2025.You can read more about our decode projects in our 2024 annual report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F1W3wmgaVfL6hl_bvNO5JTK4PG_XsEK3/view Moving forward, we will be working on orca communication with partners in a project to pioneer new methods of data collection and annotation that can help to pair movement with vocalizations and unlock semantic meaning of killer whale vocalization. Building the Field By establishing standards, creating a shared understanding, sharing our science, and promoting responsible practices, were creating the conditions for a global community to come together and build the foundations of this emerging field.Expanding Access to AI Tools and BenchmarksESP's open-source tools and benchmarks (on GitHub and HuggingFace) drove impact across the research community. For example, Our Bio-logger benchmark, BEBE, helped Oregon State University researchers study cougar behavior in Yellowstone to improve predation modeling. Cornell postdoc Wendy Erb used ESP's Voxaboxen to detect vocal stress in Bornean orangutans affected by wildfire smoke. Researchers from multiple institutions, including Raincoast Conservation Foundation, cited our AVES audio encoder model in a paper exploring ML techniques for beluga whale call classification.Building the Research Community We're fostering a growing community at the intersection of AI and animal communication. Our Discord community connects bioacousticians, ML researchers, and conservationists and has expanded significantly. ESP also co-organized the Virtual Interaction and Human-Animal Robot Communication (VIHAR) workshop with Professor Roger Moore at INTERSPEECH and participated in the Animals in Translation workshop (led by Interspecies Internet, co-hosted by Santa Fe Institute), which established criteria for successful animal communication decoding. Results were published in 2025.Looking forward, we will be co-organizing a workshop in 2025 at a leading machine learning conference, in partnership with collaborators from Google DeepMind, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, and ENES Lab Saint-Etienne. Our day-long workshop titled AI for Non-Human Animal Communication is a first-of-its-kind for the NeurIPS conference, bridging the gap between AI and ethology.Preparing Society for ImpactUltimately we are aiming to shift human mindsets away from human exceptionalism in order to reset our relationship with nature. To catalyze this shift, we have been working with partners to establish the foundations for selecting a suite of pilot projects that will help people imagine new futures while also avoiding the possible unintended consequences of this new technology. These projects include a survey on AI and animal communication to be conducted in 2025 to better understand public sentiment and use this to refine our theory of change. Responsible development and useWe have been developing a set of principles to govern the development and use of our models, which will engage experts and stakeholders across a wide range of disciplines. Looking ahead, we aim to catalyze a global conversation on the standards and regulatory frameworks that will be needed for this emerging field.Shifting PerspectivesWe drove momentum and seeded new ideas in influential global media including: The Financial Times, Atmos, Axios, Vox, Bloomberg, AP, New Yorker, Forbes, and more. 3829285 true true false false false false false false false false false false false false false true true false false true true false false false false false false false false true false false false false false false false false false false false false false false false false false true 15 0 true 14 true false false false false false false false 0 false false false false false false false false false false X 8 6 false false false false false false false true true false false true true true true true true true true false CA X ANDREA AUSTIN 7074398688 8605 SANTA MONICA BLVD PMB 78666 WEST HOLLYWOOD CA 90069 Andrea Austin Head of Operations 40.00 0.00 180000 0 33444 KATHERINE ZACARIAN CEO 40.00 0.00 X X 180000 0 11655 Benjamin Hoffman Senior AI Research 40.00 0.00 155000 0 36445 Sara Keen Senior Research Sc 40.00 0.00 155000 0 34004 Masato Hagiwara Senior AI Research 40.00 0.00 155000 0 25493 Madeline Cusimano Senior AI Research 40.00 0.00 155000 0 24979 Jen-Yu Liu Senior AI Research 40.00 0.00 155000 0 18884 AZA RASKIN President 20.00 0.00 X X 144000 0 4320 MICHAEL SELVITELLE Senior Advisor 8.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 SEAN WHITE Director 2.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 WENDY HANAMURA Director 2.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 BREWSTER KAHLE Director 2.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 MERLIN VAN LAWICK Director 2.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 KAY BUTTERFIELD Director 2.00 0.00 X 0 0 0 1279000 189224 8 false true false 0 20597542 20597542 0 164754 164754 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 OTHER REVENUE 900099 30916 30916 30916 20793212 195670 0 0 0 0 553420 412599 41457 99364 0 1375230 1025297 103019 246914 48447 36120 3629 8698 228548 170393 17121 41034 144980 108089 10861 26030 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 COMPUTER/DATA AND SUBSCRIPTION 787453 742366 43692 1395 CONTRACT SERVICES 776311 613241 163070 OTHER CONTRACTORS VIA EOR 585674 436647 43873 105154 TRAVEL AND MEETINGS 260529 245235 37 15257 76530 39298 34368 2864 4837122 3829285 461127 546710 2365094 6192842 8137768 81000 4079275 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2446094 18409885 41863 265177 454728 239115 496591 504292 X 1899977 13715217 49526 4190376 1949503 17905593 2446094 18409885 15956090 X false true X true false X 575000 1528459 2977392 3444039 3597542 12122432 0 0 575000 1528459 2977392 3444039 3597542 12122432 3516614 8605818 58 5869 45855 164754 216536 0 3116 14689 30916 48721 12387689 0.69470 0.73420 X RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED RESTRICTED X 20793212 20793212 20793212 4837122 4837122 4837122 Part X : FIN48 Footnote ESP IS EXEMPT FROM FEDERAL AND CALIFORNIA INCOME TAXES UNDER THE PROVISIONS OF SECTION 501(C)(3) OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE AND SECTION 23701D OF THE CALIFORNIA REVENUE AND TAXATION CODE. THEREFORE, NO PROVISION FOR FEDERAL OR CALIFORNIA INCOME TAX IS REFLECTED IN THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.ESP'S RETURNS ARE SUBJECT TO EXAMINATION BY FEDERAL AND STATE TAX AUTHORITIES, GENERALLY FOR THREE AND FOUR YEARS, RESPECTIVELY, AFTER THEY ARE FILED. ESP RECOGNIZES THE EFFECT OF INCOME TAX POSITIONS ONLY IF THOSE POSITIONS ARE MORE LIKELY THAN NOT TO BE SUSTAINED. ESP DOES NOT BELIEVE ITS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS INCLUDE ANY UNCERTAIN TAX POSITIONS. EUROPE 0 6 PROGRAM SERVICES & FUNDRAISING RESEARCH PROJECTS 585675 6 6 585675 585675 false false false false false false false false false false false false false false false Andrea Austin Head of Operations 180000 8625 24819 213444 Benjamin Hoffman Senior AI Research 155000 7750 28695 155000 36445 Jen-Yu Liu Senior AI Research 155000 7750 11134 155000 18884 KATHERINE ZACARIAN CEO 180000 225 11430 191655 Madeline Cusimano Senior AI Research 155000 4650 20329 155000 24979 Masato Hagiwara Senior AI Research 155000 25493 155000 25493 Sara Keen Senior Research Sc 155000 7750 26254 155000 34004 Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 11b FORM 990 IS PROVIDED TO EACH BOARD MEMBER BEFORE IT IS FILED WITH THE IRS. Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 12c MEMBERS OF THE BOARD ARE REQUIRED TO DISCLOSE ANY POSSIBLE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ANNUALLY. BOARD MEMBERS ARE ADVISED TO INFORM THE BOARD OF ANY POSSIBLE CONFLICTS AS SOON AS PRACTICAL. Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 15a COMPENSATION IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY THE BOARD. Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 15b COMPENSATION IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY THE BOARD. Form 990, Part VI, Section C, Line 19 GOVERNING DOCUMENTS, CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY, AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ARE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC UPON REQUEST.