AI Grant


AI Grant offers no-strings-attached grants for open source AI projects, and uncapped SAFEs for AI startups.

Grants for open source projects SAFEs for startups Advisors and speakers: Organized by:
AI Grant Companies — Batch 1 See our prior research fellows here.

Can anyone apply?

Yes – no credentials required.

What type of company or project qualifies?

Anything that leverages AI models in a useful or engaging way. In particular, we're looking for technical & pragmatic founders who want to build great products. If you get a thrill from making something that other people love to use, and you understand that building a new product is 1% idea and 99% iteration, we want to support you.

What do I get if I win?

Wait, is this a grant or an investment?

It is an investment. When we started AI Grant in 2017, we handed out much smaller grants for fundamental research. We awarded grants to 36 individuals, who went on to do important research, and to found companies like Cohere, Helia, and Cresta.

Five years later, it seems much has changed: AI research is abundant, but UX and product innovation is just getting started, and so we're relaunching the program with a focus on AI products & investments versus AI papers & grants.

Are larger investments available?

Nat and Daniel separately invest in startups, generally leading rounds, investing between $1M and $100M.

Will you fund multiple projects working on the same thing?

Yes. We plan to fund many companies; some form of overlap is bound to happen. Ultimately, we don't think this will be an issue because we strongly believe the AI product market is enormous -- large enough to support both Lyft and Uber or Bing and Google.

How will you select the winners?

We're looking for smart and energetic people with actionable ideas that are clearly useful. Demos are a big plus; not just because they're fun to look at, but because they hint at the type of person that cares about the end-user experience, which is ultimately all that matters.

Do I need a company to apply?

No, but you will need one if you're accepted into the program. We only invest in Delaware corporations, but you can create one from almost anywhere in the world with Stripe Atlas (or other programs) in only a few days.

Can I apply if I've raised money already?

Yes.

I'm a single founder. Can I apply?

Yes.

Who is funding this?

Nat and Daniel have invested $10M in AI Grant. The company investments themselves are made by AI Grant LLC.

If you are raising more than this, come talk to us directly! We're interested in great companies raising between $2M and $200M.

I love this idea and I want to help! Can I provide additional funding, hardware, GPU time, datasets, mentorship, or help reviewing applications?

Yes! Thank you for being awesome! If you want to contribute in any way, please email us at sponsorship@aigrant.org.

Can I work at a company you fund?

Yes, please fill out the form here and we'll help match you.

I have further questions! How can I reach you?

support@aigrant.org

What will AI-native products look like? (this section written in August 2022)

We have some hunches, but no one knows for sure The copilot model: an assistant that looks over your shoulder and removes drudgery Utility products built on LLMs have to cope with models that hallucinate Latency matters AI-native social networks Generative entertainment New creative workflows User interface for text generation Mobile + AI Chatbots AI-native knowledge retrieval Earn money on mturk/upwork Won’t big companies just do this?