Lighthaven

A campus in Berkeley, CA, run by Lightcone Infrastructure

Retreats & Educational Workshops

15 - 70 people

We offer cozy nooks with firepits, discussion rooms with endless whiteboards, and up to 44 bedrooms (with up to 80 beds).

Educational Conferences

50 - 600 people

Conference space for up to 600 people. 20+ session spaces. 80 conference attendees can book accommodation on the campus.

Event Space

10 - 500 people

We can host events ranging from educational talks to large 500 person mixers. We can provide sound setup, music, private kitchens, snacks, catering.

What is Lighthaven?

Lighthaven is a space dedicated to hosting educational events and programs that help people think better and to improve humanity's long-term trajectory.

Past programs we hosted and were excited about have been the MATS program, which helps young researchers break into the field of AI Alignment and workshops run by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Topos institute on helping people better understand the long-term consequences of developing Artificial General Intelligence.

Lighthaven is a project by Lightcone Infrastructure, which is dedicated to facilitating intellectual progress on humanity's most important questions.

Pricing

We determine pricing on a case-by-case basis, but a good approximation is:

Retreats, Conferences and Lodging:
$100 - $250 per person per day.

Events:
$25 - $75 per person.

We offer some groups large discounts (including free) if we think a project seems particularly great to us. Please feel quite free to ask us about this.

You can use your own caterer, but our default caterer offers meals from $20/meal to $50/meal that most visitors have found quite satisfying.

We do engage in some price discrimination. If we think your best alternative to our venue would be much more expensive, we may charge more than our listed price. We try to find a fair price that splits the difference between our own costs and the value you get out of the space.

We also provide more bespoke services (see below), though we generally charge more for this.

Overall we try to be reasonable about pricing, and don't expect to make much profit on the space.

What are people saying?

Lighthaven felt rambly and wondrous and fun without being pretentious? Felt like an incredibly-well-executed, 11-of-10 house party venue (laudatory) crossed with Disneyland.

I am still learning about cool things and spaces in the venue that I missed (there was a robot sand table?)

– Manifest attendee in the Manifest feedback form

The venue itself is fucking gorgeous.

I heard something like that ~2/3 of the time as I was walking guests of honor in & giving them a tour. Something like "wow, how did you find this place?" or "damn, you guys got a good spot."

– Saul Munn, lead organizer of Manifest

We had an incredible time at the Lighthaven last week - many of the participants remarked how beautiful and cozy the campus is, and the atmosphere was extremely conducive for creative thinking and problem solving. All the little details from having lots of post-it pads and markers to mini fridges and fluffy slippers show how much thought was put into designing the space. [...]

We hope to be back at the Lighthaven again at our next event, if there are vacancies!

– Shao Wei, organizer of Finding the Right Abstractions
workshop run by the Topos Institute

Man, I really like the aesthetics. Other people seemed to also. 'Well appointed' is the phrase that keeps coming to mind for me. Lots of things I needed were nearby when I needed them. Having supplies in multiple areas is a good call and I think your supply list is pretty good.

The layout was also good for movement, good for thought. The math and science decorations were great. Vibe: it felt like you were happy to have us there and happy to help. That’s a nice and unusual thing!

– Caitlin Elizondo, Head of People Operations
at the Centre for Effective Altruism

The venue was really great, things went really smoothly, and I’m excited to use the space again in the future for similar events.

– Alex Vermeer, MIRI COO

Campus Spaces

Services We Provide

For an additional charge we can provide (among many other things):

  • Catering services, snacks & drinks
  • General ops-support for your event
  • Event branding and marketing

We have a lot of experience running all kinds of different events, from small 15-20 person dinners to 1000+ person conferences, to 2-month fellowships and research programs.

We can’t guarantee we can provide everything you need, but if you are facing some kind of problem or obstacle in the course of preparing or running your event, we can probably help you.

Aumann Hall

Bayes House

The Den

Eigenspace

Gardens

About Lightcone

Lighthaven is a project by Lightcone Infrastructure.

We build tools and services we think will help humanity flourish into the long term future. We also run LessWrong.com and the Alignment Forum.