Currently 7 active ai and ai safety grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in Worldwide. 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.
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Worldbuilding competition asking entrants to build and argue a grounded vision of a 2035 in which AI went well, submitted as text plus media. A speculative, constructive counterpoint for artists and writers engaging critically with AI and synthetic media. ELIGIBILITY: open internationally to anyone aged 16 or over (prizes paid by international bank transfer); entrants must first complete a free course of roughly 1.5 hours. Individual or team entries. Deadline 30 June 2026 (23:59 anywhere-on-earth).
Funding to develop a career working on the potential consciousness, sentience, moral status or welfare of artificial intelligence systems (digital minds). The fellowships aim to grow a new generation of researchers, policymakers, communicators, entrepreneurs and practitioners working on digital minds and AI sentience issues. EXAMPLE CANDIDATES: a current or planned PhD or other degree student seeking financial support to study digital minds issues; a technical AI researcher who wants to explore research topics, attend events and meet organisations in the space in order to select a high-impact role; or a communications professional pivoting into digital minds work (for example running surveys or building experts' platforms). SUPPORT: a stipend calibrated to award duration, cost of living and prior experience, plus additional case-by-case funding for research or logistics. APPLY by 10 July 2026. Questions: digitalminds-rfp@longview.org.
A joint philanthropic funding call by Schmidt Sciences, Google DeepMind, ARIA, the Cooperative AI Foundation and Google.org to catalyse the foundational scientific research needed to understand, evaluate and control risks emerging from large-scale ecosystems of interacting AI agents deployed by multiple actors (multi-principal, multi-agent settings). The call argues that focusing only on the safety and alignment of individual models is insufficient, and seeks system-level approaches. RESEARCH AGENDA (four clusters): (1) Sandboxes and Testbeds, realistic, reproducible multi-agent environments for studying populations of frontier-model agents; (2) The Science of Agent Networks, how collective capabilities emerge and scale, how networks fail, and how dangerous population-level properties can be detected; (3) Strengthening Agent Infrastructure, evaluating and stress-testing primitives such as identity, verifiability, reputation, communication and commitment; (4) Multi-Agent Oversight and Control, detection, attribution, security and intervention methods to keep deployed agent populations safe at scale. Proposals may target one cluster or span several, with priority on depth over breadth and on realistic sandboxes and testbeds. OUT OF SCOPE: single-agent safety, capability advancement without a clear safety motivation, toy systems, naive application of pre-existing solutions, commercial product development, and purely conceptual/policy work. ELIGIBILITY: individual researchers, research teams, research institutions and multi-institution collaborations across universities, national laboratories, institutes and nonprofit research organisations; open globally. Informational webinars on 30 June and 23 July 2026; notification of decisions in autumn 2026. Proposals due 8 August 2026 by 11:59pm Anywhere on Earth. Contact: multiagentsafety@schmidtsciences.org. Apply at https://schmidtsciences.smapply.io/prog/scaling_ai_safety_for_a_multi_agent_world/.
Foresight Institute grants supporting work at the intersection of AI, science and safety, including AI-for-science tools and AI-safety research. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, teams and organisations (for- and non-profit) worldwide; applicants active in the San Francisco or Berlin hubs are prioritised. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis with a cutoff on the last day of each month. Apply via the Foresight Institute grants page.
Effective Altruism Funds' Long-Term Future Fund makes grants to individuals and small groups working to reduce risks from advanced AI and other threats to humanity's long-term future, including technical AI safety and alignment research, field-building and communication. ELIGIBILITY: individuals and small groups; not geographically restricted. Applications accepted on a rolling basis via the EA Funds application form.
Rolling grant programme funding individuals at any career stage who want to pursue careers that could help reduce global catastrophic risks or otherwise improve the long-term future. Especially interested in candidates working on risks from future advances in AI and global catastrophic biological risks. Funds graduate study (master's/PhD/MPP/law school), unpaid internships, postdocs, professional certifications, online courses, independent study/upskilling, career-transition and exploration periods, and academic sabbaticals. Concrete examples Coefficient Giving lists: a senior ML engineer doing six months of independent study to investigate AI risk mitigation careers; a physics PhD doing self-guided ML interpretability work to transition into technical AI safety; a management consultant exploring how to apply their skill set to GCR; a tenured ML/CS professor taking a one-year sabbatical to contribute to AI safety or governance. Open globally; no institutional affiliation required. Looks for candidates whose funding would 'make a difference' (otherwise unable to find sufficient funding, or existing funding has restrictions). Encourages applications from women and people of color. Now subsumes the former Biosecurity Scholarship. Applications are open until further notice and assessed on a rolling basis. Free to apply.
Lightweight rolling grant for individual journalists worldwide (writers, photographers, radio, film; freelance or staff) examining how AI systems are designed, sold and deployed in communities. Faster turnaround than the Pulitzer AI Accountability Fellowship: decisions in 1 to 2 weeks.