Giorgos Tsetis, a Greek engineer who built his fortune in health and wellness, is turning his AI investment gains into philanthropy, urging wealthy families to give back now instead of waiting.
Tsetis co-founded the hair growth brand Nutrafol and runs the family office Great Things, which backs fast-growing startups while committing 20% of yearly net realized profits to charity.
Over the past 18 months, the firm has invested close to $40 million and given or pledged about $7 million to nonprofits, Tsetis said. He launched Great Things about a year ago after selling his remaining Nutrafol stake to Unilever in a deal valued at $3.5 billion.
Tsetis, 41, said he thinks constantly about solving problems now. He has children and cares about the future, he said, but feels urgency as innovation creates new wealth. He credited the AI boom with a sevenfold return on an early Anthropic stake, which he exited within 18 months through a secondary sale.
How a Greek engineer structures AI wealth for philanthropy
The firm’s structure was modeled on venture capital and private equity profit sharing, said Gabriel Cooperman, Tsetis’ advisor at UBS Wealth Management. Cooperman said the model works much like a profit-sharing arrangement, except the payout goes to nonprofits rather than partners, and he called it sustainable.
A donor-advised fund covers the giving in years when profits fall short of pledges. Beneficiaries include a Bronx boxing academy and Every Cure, which repurposes drugs for rare diseases.
Without outside investors, Tsetis and partner Roman Kalantari move quickly on deals, and Tsetis expects to invest another $60 million over the next two years.
Both men said they have grown more cautious about AI, shifting toward later-stage deals that prioritize liquidity. Kalantari, who began his career during the dot-com crash, said a correction is coming and judges AI firms by which can survive it.
Balancing controversial bets like Polymarket with its mission
Great Things has moved away from startups built purely on AI hype, favoring ones built around their own lasting technology, such as Lila Sciences, a robotics lab startup it recently backed again.
The firm also holds Polymarket, a controversial prediction market startup. Tsetis called it a bet on strong returns paired with using those returns responsibly, and said the firm could exit quickly given demand for its shares.
For this Greek engineer, balancing AI gains with philanthropy remains a work in progress, one he hopes becomes a model for others.
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