Currently 12 active ai and ai safety grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in Remote (work-from-anywhere). Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
Subscribe: RSS feed · Calendar (.ics)
A bias bounty from Zindi, Humane Intelligence, Radiant Earth, and the Heising-Simons Foundation: measure coverage gaps in Overture Maps across US Census tracts by comparing it against Census TIGER/Line Roads, Microsoft US Building Footprints, USGS National Map critical facilities, and Census County Business Patterns. Submissions are automatically evaluated with a Bias Score assessing equity metrics across demographic and climate-vulnerability strata, surfacing whose neighbourhoods open map data underserves. PRIZES: 1st USD 4,500, 2nd USD 2,500, 3rd USD 1,500, Best Bias Discovery USD 1,000, Best Documentation USD 500 (USD 10,000 total), plus 10,000 Zindi points. ELIGIBILITY: open to all, teams of up to 4. HOW TO ENTER: create a Zindi account, download the sample submission files, compute coverage-gap scores per tract GEOID, and upload a CSV; 10 submissions per day, 300 total. Free to enter. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026.
Foresight Institute's AI for Science and Safety Nodes request for proposals funds open, AI-first projects across three calls: I. Local Compute (compute that individuals and communities physically own and control), II. Coordination and Accountability (supercollaboration and decentralised alignment, human empowerment, and AI insurance and open governance: multi-agent oversight and verification, tools for collective deliberation, decision rules for when human control adds value, and independent risk assessment or insurance mechanisms for frontier labs), and III. AI-first Science (automated nanotechnology, whole-brain emulation, frontier bio). Grantees can also get workspace in the San Francisco or Berlin AI Nodes (a community xNode runs in Cape Town) and private compute. All funded code, data and outputs must be open-sourced. Projects are judged on fit with the focus area, impact on reducing existential risk from AI, feasibility within 1 to 3 years, AI-first working methods, ability to execute, and high-risk, high-reward potential. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, teams and organisations worldwide; nonprofits and for-profits welcome (for-profits must justify the need for grant funding). Priority goes to applicants who want to work in person at one of the Nodes, but it is not required. Review takes about three months; applications can opt in to sharing with Lightcone Commons. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026, 23:59 PDT.
GAIN SSA (Global AI Youth Network, Sub-Saharan Africa) runs the AI Safety Essentials Fellowship for residents of Africa considering how they can be effective contributors in shaping the continent's transition toward containing risks from transformative AI. Fellows spend six weeks mapping the priorities and gaps that need to be filled in Africa's AI safety ecosystem, through curated pre-reading and a live group call each week (about 5 hours per week). CURRICULUM: existential risks and catastrophic vectors; frontier AI models and Africa; defining safe and beneficial AI; subfields and alignment architectures; Africa's AI safety landscape and policy; and a capstone week on fellowships and career launch, with guidance toward international pipelines such as MATS, ERA, BlueDot and GovAI. Mentorship comes from international AI safety researchers, governance fellows and peer builders. FUNDING: after the program, top capstone action-plan proposals are funded from a USD 500 to 1,000 micro-grant pool (capped at USD 1,000), including proposals needing compute, travel to AI alignment conferences in Sub-Saharan Africa, or communication work (for example Substack Pro for writers); results are shared within 10 days of receiving a proposal. The main aim is to have participants take action to build Africa's first AI safety systems. APPLICATION: expression of interest for the inaugural cohort via the Google Form linked from the program page. DEADLINE: expressions of interest close 8 November 2026.
Bellingcat, the open source investigations collective, is hiring a contractor AI engineer to build agentic systems that support its investigators. (Listed on Grant Desk as an exception to the no-jobs rule: a remote, paid, public-interest AI contract.) THE ROLE: build, test, deploy and monitor multi-agent workflows for open source investigations; develop agentic pipelines with human oversight, feedback loops and evaluation metrics; architect and maintain cloud infrastructure for hosting LLM harnesses and monitoring agents using token-as-a-service providers; develop MCP servers and data bridges connecting agents to open source research tools and databases; and create evaluation frameworks for the performance and reasoning of agentic pipelines. WHAT YOU GET: an annual fee of USD 80,000 to 93,000 for full-time work (part-time 20 hours/week also possible), on an initial 12-month contract, working remotely with some flexibility to work from other countries for a limited number of weeks per year. ELIGIBILITY: hands-on full-stack development experience including infrastructure maintenance and server-side data workflows; experience with agentic AI workflows and open-source harnesses; experience with human-in-the-loop design (approval checks, feedback loops); a collaborative record of working with non-technical colleagues on public interest technology; English proficiency; and a time zone overlapping with Europe. Experience with mission-driven organisations or open source / public interest tech is a plus. APPLICATION: via Google Form; Bellingcat asks that applications not be AI-generated (AI for grammar checks is fine). Review is rolling from 21 October and interviews may start before the close. DEADLINE: 8 November 2026.
The Mozilla Foundation Incubator's next cohort funds seven Human-Scale AI projects: working AI technologies that are small (small models, less compute, able to run locally or on low-power devices), intentional (users and communities get insight into and control over their data, and systems can be configured, forked or community-governed) and tailored (fit-for-purpose for a specific community, context or problem, with particular interest in resource-constrained regions, people with disabilities and other underserved groups). Projects must already be deployed with the people they serve, even at pilot scale, and show early product-community fit. Not wanted: concepts without working technology, standalone governance or policy work, generic chatbots, or products whose core depends on a frontier model or a slimmed-down version of one. The cohort runs for 12 months from April 2027 with coaching, a Mozilla programme officer, network access and a showcase at the Mozilla Festival; required sessions are about one or two hour-long virtual meetings a month, and teams must work in the open. ELIGIBILITY: worldwide; you do not need to be a nonprofit but the project must have a charitable purpose and you must be legally able to receive Mozilla Foundation grant funds. Applications in English (translation tools welcome). Multi-stage process: an initial project proposal, then a full application for a shortlist. Info session 12 November 2026, 17:00 UTC. DEADLINE: Friday 20 November 2026, 11:59PM PST (UTC-8).
AIXI Labs is a small London-based non-profit doing AI safety research grounded in algorithmic information theory. Its stated position is that most AI research today is either mathematically clean but narrow, or practical but too opaque for rigorous safety analysis; the lab targets a third category, methods general enough to describe powerful agents and provable enough to support real safety claims, using AIXI (the theoretical model of unbounded artificial superintelligence) and then porting the strongest of those ideas to modern LLM-based agents. The fellowship is a quarterly, rolling programme for researchers who want to work on this agenda under close mentorship from the core team: Cole Wyeth (Founder and Executive Director), Marcus Hutter (Research Director) and Aram Ebtekar (Founding Research Scientist). Fellows pursue a focused research project over roughly a quarter and receive a monthly stipend plus a compute budget for machine-learning work. The fellowship is fully remote, so fellows may work from anywhere in the world or from the London base. RESPONSIBILITIES: pursue a self-directed research project aligned with the lab's algorithmic-information-theoretic approach to AI safety, spanning anything from foundational theory to empirical tests with LLM-based agents; shape the project direction around your own strengths and interests, as the lab supports a range of work within this framework; and contribute papers, blog posts or other written output communicating results to the broader AI safety and ML research communities. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: a research background at the level of a current PhD student (for primarily empirical projects, a master's-level command of the relevant mathematics paired with substantial industry or applied research experience can also qualify); solid grounding in probability, statistics, information theory and reinforcement learning, sufficient to engage seriously with AIXI-style theoretical models (prior expertise in algorithmic information theory or AIXI is NOT required); strong verbal and written communication skills; genuine motivation to reduce existential risk from advanced AI and enthusiasm for the lab's kind of work. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: publications at top ML, AI or theory venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ALT or COLT, though the lab values the strength of your best work over volume; background in algorithmic information theory, computability theory, learning theory or related theoretical computer science; experience fine-tuning, evaluating or red-teaming LLM-based and/or RL agents; prior engagement with the UAI/AIXI community or related fields, including members of the lab's online reading groups. APPLICATIONS are reviewed on a rolling basis and previous applicants remain eligible for later rounds.
Manifund's regranting program funds AI safety and global-catastrophic-risk work through a network of expert regrantors, each given an independent budget to recommend grants to people and projects they find promising. Applicants submit a project proposal on the Manifund platform; regrantors can then offer funding. GRANTS: typically USD 5,000 to 50,000, though amounts vary. ELIGIBILITY: individuals (no legal entity or institutional affiliation required) and organizations working on AI safety or reducing catastrophic risk from AI. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis; per-regrantor budget availability varies over time. Learn more at the regranting page and apply on the Manifund platform (manifund.org).
Supports journalists producing long-form investigative reports and tech-policy researchers conducting research, analysis or evaluation that informs policy related to the Kapor Foundation's three priority areas, with an emphasis on responsible AI and tech ethics. Priority areas: CS/AI Education, Innovation, Governance. Aims to dismantle systemic inequities in the tech sector by funding researchers and investigative journalists exploring barriers and driving actionable solutions. Applications accepted on a rolling basis; first awards to be announced by 30 June 2026.
Commissioned long-form writing at the intersection of design, technology, art and culture. Editorial themes: designing with AI as cultural and infrastructural system; responsive and adaptive materials; politics of platforms and creative-infrastructure governance; post-digital hybrid making; designing for collapse and continuity; creative research as practice. In-depth pieces only, no press releases or promotional copy.
Luminos.AI, an embedded AI-governance and legal-risk infrastructure company (built by former Fortune 500 AI governance leads and company-builders), runs a part-time fellowship for a technically inclined law student or recent graduate who wants to work at the frontier of AI agent oversight and risk evaluation. Fellows work directly with senior lawyers and engineers on the practical problem of how to test, evaluate and govern generative and agentic AI systems that change every quarter. WHAT YOU DO: research and help design rigorous testing and evaluation approaches for generative and agentic AI, translating fast-moving legal and regulatory requirements into concrete, testable standards; track the global AI regulatory landscape in real time and turn it into practical guardrails; draft frameworks, workflows and risk assessments that hold up under real deployment conditions; and partner closely with the technical team, where comfort around code, models or data is an asset. Fellows with technical skills who want to spend part of their time working directly with engineering are encouraged to do so. WHO YOU ARE: currently pursuing a JD (or a recent graduate) from a top law program; an excellent researcher and writer comfortable applying existing law to genuinely new situations; genuinely enthusiastic about AI and willing to learn the technical details. Bonus: coding ability, ML/GenAI exposure, or a background in privacy, security or data governance law. TERMS: USD 35 per hour, remote, part-time, flexible 3 to 6 month term, with direct mentorship from senior legal and technical leadership. TO APPLY: send a cover letter, resume, transcript and writing sample to careers@luminos.ai with the subject line 'Application for Luminos.AI Fall 2026 Fellowship'. Rolling review with remote interviews.
Rest of World is in the third year of its Labor x Tech program, underwritten by the Ford Foundation, commissioning reported stories on the changing nature of work at a moment of upheaval: AI tools and robotics reshaping professions at every rung of society, from self-driving cars replacing drivers to humanoid robots working alongside nurses; lay-offs across the tech industry; and the gig work model continuing to reshape traditional employment. The programme's premise is that this moment needs documenting now, in stories that help prepare society for what comes next. WHAT THEY COMMISSION: reported stories of 800 to 1,000 words from around the world on this beat, at a fee of USD 1,000 per story. WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR, based on previous years: how new technology is transforming existing industries in unique ways and creating unexpected new pockets of employment; how technology is leading to significant job gain, job loss, and government responses to those trends; whether large demographic shifts are following the adoption of new technology or the arrival of new industries; how workplace technology is changing workplace dynamics; how new industries and tools are changing workers' incomes; and the expansion of the gig work model alongside the threats of automation. EXAMPLES of the kind of story they hope to commission, all previously published by Rest of World: workers in Chinese data factories teaching humanoid robots boring tasks; entry-level tech workers describing the AI-fuelled jobpocalypse; Microsoft and Google claiming their data centres create thousands of jobs while their permit filings say otherwise; AI helping judges close cases quickly and lawyers open them quickly; tech workers fuelling a mini baby boom in Taiwan's Silicon Valley; Dubai's robotaxi ambitions coming for human drivers; and the job brokers who run the lives of the migrant workers staffing Taiwan's chip plants. ELIGIBILITY NOTE: the programme is unable to commission reporting in India or from writers based in India for this series. HOW TO PITCH: send 2 to 3 paragraphs laying out the nutgraf of the proposal and explaining how the pitch fits the editorial mission of the programme. Indicate what sources will be used, whether any pre-reporting has been completed, what reporting has already been done on the topic at other outlets, and what the story contributes to the discourse. Pitches go to laborxtech@restofworld.org. Pitching is open on a rolling basis; no closing date is stated.
The Anthropic Fellows Program is a four-month, fully funded research fellowship with direct mentorship from Anthropic researchers. Fellows work on empirical projects aligned with Anthropic's research priorities using external infrastructure, aiming to produce public outputs such as papers. Five workstreams: AI Safety, AI Security, ML Systems and Performance, Reinforcement Learning, and Economics and Policy; safety topics include scalable oversight, adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, and model organisms. FUNDING: a weekly stipend of USD 3,850 (GBP 2,310 / CAD 4,300), around USD 15,000 per month in compute funding, and other research expenses. ELIGIBILITY: fluent Python; available full-time for four months; strong technical background in computer science, mathematics, or physics; work authorization in the US, UK, or Canada (no visa sponsorship). Locations: San Francisco, London, Ontario, or remote within those countries. APPLICATION: rolling, via the Constellation portal; the process includes an initial application, reference checks, technical assessments, interviews, and a research discussion. The next cohort is expected to start in January 2027, so apply well before the end of 2026.