Currently 17 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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A global research fellowship for early- and mid-career researchers whose work can strengthen understanding of how children thrive across diverse contexts. Funds are awarded to and administered by the fellow's institution and may support the fellow's effort and broader research costs (research personnel, professional travel, equipment, dissemination, trainee support). Fellows join an interdisciplinary cohort and take part in convenings. Research must align with one of three themes: the youngest children (birth to eight) in crisis and conflict settings; inclusion and wellbeing of neurodivergent children (with a focus on Autism and ADHD, up to 18); and children's learning and development in an AI-enabled world (up to 18). The role of play may be explored where relevant but is optional. ELIGIBILITY: early- and mid-career researchers worldwide employed by a university or research institute, holding a PhD or equivalent doctorate by July 31, 2026, received no earlier than January 1, 2016 (subject to approved career-break policy). Applicants from any country welcome except those subject to EU or US sanctions. Individual applications only. Materials: online form, two-page CV, 250-word abstract, 500-word personal statement, five-page research proposal, budget and justification, and two-page bibliography. Two-stage review; applicants informed of status in November 2026. Questions: legofellowship@ssrc.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/.
Research Fellows play a central role in GovAI's research: experienced researchers who conduct independent, high-quality work with direct relevance to AI governance and policy while contributing to GovAI's intellectual community. NOTE: applications open at the end of July 2026; GovAI does not publish a fixed closing date, so the 17 August 2026 date shown here is just when this listing is set to expire (check the GovAI page for the live status). Work may take the form of academic publications, policy memos, reports or blog posts, alongside mentoring early-career researchers (such as Summer and Winter Fellows), shaping GovAI's research strategy and convening stakeholders. Fellows work under a Senior Research Fellow or leadership-team member but have substantial autonomy over projects, agendas and publication formats. TOPICS include risk management, threat modeling, economics of AI, geopolitics of AI, public policy and technical governance; candidates working on adjacent topics are also welcome. ELIGIBILITY: open to a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds (computer science, political science, public policy, economics, philosophy, law, plus government/industry/civil-society experience); no strict educational requirement, but the strongest candidates typically have multiple years of relevant research or policy experience and a track record of high-quality, impactful work. A shared application also covers a one-year visiting Research Scholar position for those with less experience (apply once for both). PROCESS: written application; a paid remote work test (some workstreams add a research agenda and a second paid test); then a final stage of two interviews and reference checks. Deep expertise in technical governance, frontier safety design, cybersecurity or US policy is especially welcome. Contact recruitment@governance.ai with location or access questions.
Annual essay competition from the Berggruen Institute, a companion to the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture, seeking new thinking and cross-cultural perspectives on fundamental philosophical questions of significance for contemporary life and the future. It looks for essays in the tradition of Rousseau, Montaigne, and Emerson (models cited include Frankfurt, Nagel, Sontag, Fukuyama, and recent Noema pieces), not peer-reviewed academic work: novel ideas, clearly argued in compelling ways for intellectually serious readers. THEME for 2026: 'A New Axial Age?' Referencing Karl Jaspers's Axial Age (c. 800-200 BCE), the prompt asks whether civilisation is again at a 'hinge of history' undergoing a pivotal transformation of consciousness driven by rapid technological change and its social, economic, and political consequences. Suggested (non-exhaustive) angles: the foundational ideas and institutions underpinning present and future societies; the philosophical implications of the current era; the future of human evolution and life amid the ecological crisis; shared conceptual foundations for a common future; global transformation driven by technology and the rise of AI; the end of the global order and its ramifications; and the future of life amid biotechnology and synthetic life. Entrants may choose their own topic; for 2026 creative fiction is accepted. ELIGIBILITY: open to the public; not for academic papers and not governed by academic disciplinary standards or affiliations. Length up to 10,000 words in English or 15,000 characters in Chinese (excluding diagrams, tables, endnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration). One submission per year per entrant, in either English or Chinese; co-authorship allowed. Submissions must be original and previously unpublished. AI USAGE: generative AI must not be used to create content or substitute original thought, and entrants must engage primary sources rather than AI summaries; AI is permitted only for proofreading/grammar, as quoted supporting material when AI itself is the subject of the research, or for translating an essay into English or Chinese, and all AI use (including AI-assisted translation) must be disclosed on the front page or the entry is disqualified. JUDGING: originality, clarity, and style. Essays are due by 23:59 PT on 17 August 2026; PDF only. Chinese-language submissions use a separate page. Inquiries to essay@berggruen.org.
An eight-week full-time empirical AI alignment research programme run by the AI Alignment Foundation, with a dedicated research manager, mentorship from senior researchers, compute and infrastructure, culminating in a Demo Day where fellows present their work. Fellows receive a USD 12,000 stipend paid in two installments plus a compute budget. The programme is fully remote for the research period; Demo Day is hybrid in Los Angeles and travel is covered for fellows who attend in person. ELIGIBILITY: open to all career stages, including recent PhDs, graduate students, self-taught researchers and career-changers, but candidates need a strong machine learning background, demonstrated engagement with alignment research, prior independent research output, and the ability to work autonomously. Non-US applicants are welcome provided they can make Pacific Time meetings; current graduate students may apply if they can confirm availability. This is explicitly a technical programme: the foundation says policy-focused applicants should not apply. SELECTION: all applications are reviewed, qualified candidates advance to a technical test, and finalists are interviewed, with decisions expected by early September. Applications close 17 August 2026 (Anywhere on Earth); the programme starts 8 September 2026.
Antikythera, a research programme on planetary computation and the evolution of intelligence, invites contributions to Agentworld, a special issue of its peer-reviewed MIT Press journal launching Fall 2026. THEME: Agentworld is a research initiative on the medium-term future of hybrid human-AI societies, framed not around tools for agentic task completion but around what the brief calls 'the human perplexity of deep agentic diffusion'. It treats human societies as the evolutionary niches into which new artificial species must adapt, where the constraints of agentic integration are qualitative and open-ended (psychological, philosophical, linguistic, symbolic, existential) rather than utility functions to be solved. The framing describes a 'parasociety' of densely reticulated social graphs in which agent-to-agent communication constitutes most socially significant interaction, humans and agents anthropomorphise each other by inheritance rather than necessity, and the two overlapping societies act as mutual evolutionary niches. The disciplinary posture proposed is 'a preemptive anthropology of open-world centaur societies': building the vocabulary, scenarios and conceptual armature for an emergent sociality while it is still forming, rather than describing it after the fact. WHAT THEY WANT: theoretical essays and technical papers that engage the Agentworld themes directly and explain how the contribution adds to the special issue's core questions. Philosophical, theoretical, technical, design-led and product-oriented research are all in scope. The call explicitly favours work that exceeds conventional academic journal formats, including contributions combining philosophical argument, technical analysis, design research, diagrams, software, infrastructure proposals, visual media or web-native formats. Contributors may optionally propose still images, diagrams, video, web-based or interactive components, and should say whether they have the design, development or production capacity to realise them; these elements are not required. SUBMIT: an abstract or proposal of up to 500 words; author name(s), affiliation(s), contact details, biography(ies) and CV(s); a designated lead author or contact person for collaborative submissions; and a portfolio with at least one relevant work sample such as a preprint, published article or paper. Full paper drafts are encouraged where available but not required at the initial stage. Submissions may be individual or collaborative. TIMING: the review window opened 25 June 2026. NOTE: no closing date is published on the call page; the deadline shown here is a placeholder set roughly a month out, so check the site or submit early.
Grain is a cookbook of critical and creative AI literacy exercises for educators across audiovisual and creative practice, co-produced by AIxDESIGN and the Netherlands Film Academy and led by Nadia Piet. The open call collects 'recipes': tried-and-tested group exercises for the classroom or workshop that get people thinking critically and making creatively with AI. Exercises can be hands-on or analog, 15 minutes or a full day, beginner or advanced; the one hard requirement is that someone else can read your recipe and run it themselves. Examples of what might fit: hands-on experiments with specific AI tools (image generators, chatbots, code assistants, video models); analog activities that reveal computational logic through embodied practice; critical readings, watchings, or listenings with structured discussion; provocations, games, or role-plays that get at how AI sees, thinks, or makes; and exercises that help people figure out how they want to relate to AI in their own practice. WHAT YOU GET: your recipe formatted and credited to you in the first edition of Grain, a print copy when it lands, and an invite to the launch. Everything is published under CC BY-SA 4.0 so the work can travel and you keep authorship. FEE: this round offers a need-based fee for freelance and independent practitioners of EUR 150 per recipe; if making the time would be hard without it, email hello@aixdesign.co with your proposal. After this round the call stays open but the fee will not. LIVE SESSION: an optional 30-minute live session on Wednesday 12 August 2026 at 16:00 CEST lets you bring a rough exercise and turn it into a recipe on the spot with the Grain Recipe Converter (online, sign up at luma.com/84w148in). Submissions are open until the end of August 2026; Grain publishes March 2027. Submit via the form; questions to hello@aixdesign.co.
Hiding in Plain Site is an international public art short film festival accepting film, video art, XR, and explicitly AI-generated or AI-assisted moving image works of 2 to 20 minutes, screened in public space. Free to submit; selected filmmakers receive a modest stipend whose amount is revenue-dependent and not yet confirmed. Deadline 10 September 2026.
The Wilson Center, the congressionally chartered nonpartisan policy research institution in Washington DC, awards 10 to 20 research fellowships for its 2027-2028 class. Fellows conduct research and write in their areas of interest while interacting with policymakers in Washington and with other fellows. The Center accepts policy-relevant, nonpartisan proposals that address key foreign policy challenges confronting the United States and the world, and projects must align with at least one of the Center's four scholarship pillars: strategic competition, economic statecraft, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION, and regional scholarship. The technology and innovation pillar is the relevant route for AI governance, emerging technology and digital policy projects, which the Center also supports through its Science and Technology Innovation Program. Fellows work remotely for the duration of the fellowship; the Center covers travel costs for two required trips to Washington DC at the beginning and the conclusion of the term. The stipend is USD 10,000 per month for the twelve-month term, which runs 1 June 2027 to 30 May 2028. ELIGIBILITY: academic candidates need a PhD in hand and either a published book or monograph beyond the dissertation, or a substantial body of research articles (five or more) in reputable peer-reviewed journals. Non-academic applicants (practitioners, journalists, public intellectuals) need at least ten years of relevant experience and a record of substantial policy impact. There is no citizenship restriction, but English proficiency is required. Applications, including letters of recommendation, must be submitted online via Interfolio by 11:59pm ET on 30 September 2026. Questions: fellowships@wilsoncenter.org. NOTE: this is an open-topic foreign policy fellowship, not an AI-specific one; the technology angle depends on how you scope the proposal.
The Omidyar Network Tech Journalism Fund offers rolling grants of $5,000-$25,000 for technology journalism projects. Relevant for journalists and media organizations investigating AI, tech policy, and AI's impacts on culture, society, and creative industries. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis through December 31, 2026 — one of the few currently open opportunities with a confirmed near-term deadline. Apply via the application form on omidyar.com.
The New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles champions stories told with new technology and was among the first festivals to screen AI-generated content; it has a dedicated AR / MR / AI / TECH category. Open worldwide in all formats. Deadlines: 6 December 2026 (USD 80), 6 February 2027 (USD 85), final 6 April 2027 (USD 95).
The Sony Innovation Fund (now under Sony Ventures Corporation) is Sony's corporate venture capital arm, investing in early-stage (Seed, Series A and Series B) transformational-technology startups across business, entertainment and society, including entertainment, gaming, AI, robotics, fintech, climate and blockchain. Music, entertainment and AI startups fit within its thesis, though it is not a music-only fund. Typical checks are roughly USD 100,000 to USD 5 million, alongside mentorship and access to Sony's network and R&D. It is an equity investment, not a grant. Global, with offices in the US, London/EU, Tokyo, Bangalore and Israel. Startups engage on a rolling basis via the contact and inquiry form. No application fee.
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.
PAID 12-week online mentorship program from Belgrade Art Studio: each artist works one-on-one with a dedicated artist-mentor through weekly 1-hour Zoom/Google Meet sessions, aimed at artists at a turning point in their practice (stuck, seeking new directions, experimenting with unfamiliar media including AI). Hybrid seminar/workshop format supporting both physical and online presentation, plus curatorial thinking, writing, interviews, and documentation. Closes with an online viewing and moderated discussion of the works produced. ELIGIBILITY: open worldwide to artists and creatives across visual arts, music, theatre, dance, film, writing, design, photography, digital/interactive art, games, fashion, architecture, and curation. English-language program (ability to collaborate in English preferred but accommodations possible). EXPECTATIONS: artists must treat the program as they would an in-person residency (dedicated time for research/creation/reflection), submit in-progress material for social-media exposure, participate in an artist interview, and refrain from hate speech or discriminatory content. APPLY by emailing CV, summary, and portfolio (links accepted) to artlab@belgradeartstudio.com. Rolling intake (no deadline). Selected artists are announced and contacted by email. COST: EUR 675 to participate — this is a paid offering, not a funded residency.