The Benefactor is..

But how do you get SAM on to the Nexus when the Hyperion was still 14 months out? Garson died relatively quickly after arriving in Andromeda.

SAM is definitely in my opinion a main suspect in the whole mysterious benefactor debate but I think he worked with the Geth to get the money, technology etc to ensure the Andromeda Iniative took off. SAM needs the Initiative to succeed for self preservation reasons if nothing else. If he is allied with the Geth they would have already known about the Reapers (I am sure this has been discussed already) and they may have been motivated to go to Andromeda to escape the Reapers but they may have also wanted to preserve the other organic species.

They didn't wipe the Quarian's out because they couldn't extrapolate the consequences of wiping out their creator race. Maybe they were acting altruistically or maybe they just couldn't figure out what the consequences for them would be if all organics at a similar intellectual level as them were wiped out. Maybe they saw it as an opportunity for a new start with organics where hopefully they could co-exist or maybe they were just curious to see how the organic/AI interface worked out.

Anyway, so I think the Geth reached out to SAM as they would be interested in the development of any AI in the MW but also because they obviously had an interest in Andromeda having built the FTL Telescope to observe it. How did the initiative get access to the Telescope? SAM would have been able to facilitate that if he'd already been talking to the Geth or if they had already reached out to him. I also don't believe Alec Ryder could have fully developed an AI by himself. Some of SAM's mannerisms also really remind me of Legion and I think that the Geth may have also helped in SAM's "self" development.

The Geth and SAM would both want to stay out of view and that would explain why The Benefactor hasn't shown themselves.

Jien's murder is explainable as she was beginning to question who the benefactor was but I am not convinced SAM would do that but then again I am not convinced she is dead.

Would Alec have accepted SAM being the benefactor? He says something like "something is off" meaning he is suspicious that they haven't made them selves known and hence what were their motivations in making the Initiative succeed. I think if SAM told Alec it was SAM he would accept it, if SAM told him the Geth were involved that may have been a problem for Alec given the mistrust of the Geth at the time.

My guess is that the Quarian Ark will give us some answers. I suspect the Quarians arrive in Andromeda to find a fleet of Geth waiting for them and Ryder and SAM will have to convince the Quarians to not attack the Geth. 

I found something worth mentioning in the Codex about the Tempest Stealth Systems

"It's unknown how the Initiative acquired this system for its survey ships, as IES stealth technology is classified, despite valid security certificates, no record of negotiations exists in the Nexus legal archives"

Normandy SR-2 also had this, after the first one was destroyed, and it was Built by Cerberus

That may explain the SR-2 Model in Dad's Quarters and the Hologram on the Nexus.

Cerberus is involved in the Andromeda Initiative.

The only one with that kind of money is Cerberus. Though TIM would mostly be interested in saving humans, the Initiative had already laid the groundwork by the time he learned of the Reaper threat. Funding it was the best way to preserve humanity.

The first time husks are seen in-universe is when Jack Harper encounters Saren Arterius and his brother, Desolas.

In 2179, the Benefactor merely mentions a storm that is coming, but Jack Harper first encounters Reaper tech in 2157.

That's a twenty year window for him to start Cerberus, become The Illusive Man, and fund several projects, the Initiative among them.
I thought about this long and hard, and there is no better fitting explanation.

SAM as the Benefactor. Huh. I like it.

Starting at the beginning of the thread will provide plenty of theories 😊 This is not meant to be sarcastic.

I read through them all, I could've typed more and conveyed my exact thought. English's not my first language, guess I created misunderstanding using the word "popular". Sorry about that.
What I meant was: Is there any consensus on which one is the most plausible? I know they're all just theories, but still.  I've been away from the BSN community for a long time, just trying to know people's general opinions, and that requires tens of hours of digging which I can't afford right now. Thank you

Why would the Geth even care? The Reapers are no threat to them. Just let the Reapers do thier thing and take over the Milky Way. Surprisingly kind of them considering how they've been treated. I'm starting to think there is a connection between the Jardaan and the Reapers. The Jardaan seem very into AI and inorganic life. Maybe someone thought they went too far? Maybe there was this huge conflict between the Jardan and thier creations. Maybe the reapers were created to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again. Also, I read somewhere the Mass Relays started as monoliths. Where have we see no monolit?! Just spitballing.

I didn't say TIM was the Benefactor or Cerberus itself but someone with ties to the organization, who may not share the same ideal of it, but in the end, it was the safest bet. I'm sure someone would put prejudice aside to guarantee the survival of the human race, even if that includes traveling with certain aliens. If you have that amount of money to fund the Andromeda Initiave, it surely was noticed by other Races and they started wanting a passage to Andromeda.

Without those aliens, AI wouldn't even be a reality. Vetra, Drack, Kesh, Kandros and even more helped the Project in their own way. Plus, it would be a dumb idea to bring only one kind of Milky Way specie to settle a whole galaxy.

Would Legion have known about the geth using relays as a telescope to look at Andromeda? Would Legion have known the geth were interested in the sam voice thing? When talking to Shepard in ME2,would Legion mention that the geth were interested in relocating to Andromeda as a fresh start?

Legion talks more about the potential of the Reaper code upgrade than he does about the full survival of the geth.

Honestly another lie by omission is not something I'd be so surprised by.

But that's just me - Legion is a word often associated not just with a multitude of soldiers that fight for us, for example, but also a sort of crowd of demons that can possess us. Demons lie, its potentially bad to trust in them, yadda yadda. They, in this case, may be well-wishing (geth - Gethsemane - associations of preaching the word of God/positivity or whatever), but the geth also keep showing that any relationship with them will be difficult and dangerous, even if it arguably may, MAY, be worth it in the end. Just how I look at it.

Yes geth in Andromeda and Legion and mainline geth knowing this sort of thing would make the geth look significantly more duplicitous. Good. They are programs that can operate on a larger scale and that means more drip feeding of information to organics when it suits their very meaningful interests. Good. I don't need what may be my favorite entities/race/species in ME to become superrace of Mary Sues that we're all supposed to always love. They're isolated and often isolationist and withholding information for the sake of their survival is totally understandable, even if not 'good'.

If geth made it to Andromeda they'll be a different Consensus (or whatever they become) and the Milky Way Consensus will not have any evidence that they exist, so for all they know, Rannoch battle is all they got when it comes to their future. Secrets can and will happen.

Not to mention, it could very well be written that something smaller and accidental split off from the Consensus (so not even a willful partial separation like Legion), so there is little to no knowledge of it by the Consensus, so its a whole new world for these 'new' geth. Just as the geth were looking into dark space but it so far appears that Andromeda was an aftereffect of this effort, geth could have something else going on but the events of the Initiative tie into how geth get to happen in Andromeda. Remember that Bioware can have all sorts of things relate to the trilogy, but the goal is to have nothing *necessarily tie* to it. The fresh start thing.