Are there any grants specifically for AI safety or ethical AI research?

Yes, there is an active ecosystem of grants, fellowships, and funding opportunities dedicated specifically to AI safety, alignment , and ethical AI research . These range from private philanthropic funds targeting existential risk to major international government programs focused on trustworthy AI development.

Key organizations and grant programs actively funding this space include:

• AI Safety Grants (Foresight Institute) : Awards grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 targeting early-stage, high-upside, and neglected technical AI safety research on short timelines.
• Longterm Future Fund : Focuses on projects that reduce existential and catastrophic risks from advanced AI, supporting individual researchers, field-building, and technical alignment projects.
• BlueDot Impact: Rapid Grants : Provides fast-turnaround grants of up to $10,000 for smaller projects, talent acceleration, events, or initial prototyping in AI safety.
• Institute for Progress (IFP) : Offers micro-grants and funder-matching programs for policy and technical proposals aimed at governance and preparation for advanced AI systems.
• Horizon Europe (European Commission) : A major international public funding source supporting multinational academic and industry consortia working on trustworthy AI, transparency, and ethical regulatory frameworks.
• Coefficient Giving (CG) : Supports individuals across various career stages dedicated to mitigating global catastrophic and existential risks, including technical AI safety.

To help narrow down the best fit, tell me:

• Are you looking for technical AI alignment/safety or AI ethics, policy, and governance?
• Are you applying as an independent researcher, an academic institution, or a startup/nonprofit?
• What funding size are you looking for?

Yes. There are quite a few funding sources specifically aimed at AI safety, trustworthy AI, alignment, AI governance, and ethical/ responsible AI research. The best option depends heavily on whether you're an academic, nonprofit, independent researcher, or startup.

Strong options to investigate

• Anthropic Fellows Program — Funds researchers/engineers working on AI safety with a stipend, compute, and mentorship. The 2026 program specifically lists scalable oversight, adversarial robustness, AI control, mechanistic interpretability, AI security, and model welfare.
• Open Philanthropy — One of the largest philanthropic funders of AI safety. It supports technical AI safety/alignment as well as AI governance and strategy. This is particularly relevant if you're pursuing research intended to reduce catastrophic AI risks.
• NSF programs — The National Science Foundation has funded research spanning AI safety, security, privacy, fairness, transparency, explainability, accountability, and trustworthy AI. Its AI Institutes program has explicitly included Trustworthy AI, although the particular solicitation currently surfaced is archived and NSF says a new publication is pending.
• NSF Responsible/Trustworthy AI funding — Especially relevant for university researchers working on technical or interdisciplinary research involving safe, fair, transparent, privacy-preserving, explainable, or secure AI. NSF's current AI-related opportunities also include Robust Intelligence, a foundational AI research program.
• NAIRR (National AI Research Resource) — Not exactly a conventional grant, but potentially extremely valuable: researchers can obtain access to computing, datasets, models, and other infrastructure. The program explicitly supports safe, secure, and trustworthy AI research.
• Future of Life Institute (FLI) — Has historically provided substantial grants for AI safety, alignment, governance, and long-term AI-risk research.
• Center for AI Safety (CAIS) — Supports technical AI safety research and related research initiatives.
• Partnership on AI — Particularly relevant if by "ethical AI" you mean fairness, accountability, transparency, responsible deployment, and societal impacts, rather than primarily existential AI risk.

There are also specialized programs around AI governance, interpretability, evaluations/red-teaming, AI security, human-AI interaction, algorithmic fairness, and responsible AI in healthcare. A current AI-safety funding directory lists dozens of programs across these categories.

One important distinction

"AI safety" can mean two rather different funding ecosystems:

1. Frontier AI safety/alignment — preventing deceptive or dangerous behavior, scalable oversight, interpretability, evaluations, control, catastrophic risk, etc.
2. Responsible/ethical AI — fairness, discrimination, transparency, explainability, privacy, accountability, labor impacts, human rights, governance, etc.

If you tell me your research topic, whether you're at a university/nonprofit/independent, your country, and roughly how much funding you're seeking (e.g. $25K, $100K, $500K+), I can search the currently open 2026 opportunities and narrow it to the 5–10 grants you're most likely to qualify for.

Yes, there is a robust and active ecosystem of grants specifically tailored for AI safety, alignment, and ethical AI research . These grants range from smaller, fast-turnaround project funding for individual researchers to massive philanthropic pools backing entire organizations.

A breakdown of key funding sources and grant programs actively supporting this space includes:

1. Dedicated AI Safety & Global Catastrophic Risk Funds

• Transformative AI Fund (TAIF) : Run via Effective Altruism Funds (spinning out aspects of the former Long-Term Future Fund), TAIF provides grants typically ranging from $10,000 to $150,000 for technical research, forecasting, policy analysis, and safety infrastructure.
• AI Risk Mitigation Fund : Focused explicitly on reducing existential and catastrophic risks stemming from advanced artificial intelligence systems.
• Coefficient Giving (CG) : Offers grants geared toward career transitions, training, and projects at any career stage focused on mitigating global catastrophic risks.
• Foresight Institute (AI for Science & Safety Nodes) : Offers project funding, localized compute, and physical hub spaces (in San Francisco and Berlin) for researchers focusing on an AI-first approach to safe and beneficial technological advancement.

2. Specialized Technical & Theoretical RFPs

• Iliad Requests for Proposals (RFPs) : Targets theory-driven research (such as work on ReLU networks) and high-rigor scientific methods aimed at raising the epistemic bar of AI safety. Mathematicians and cross-disciplinary researchers are heavily encouraged to apply.
• AI Alignment Foundation (AIAF) : Funds independent alignment researchers pursuing unconventional ideas outside traditional institutional constraints, as well as domain experts from non-AI fields looking to break ground in alignment.

3. Frontier Lab & Corporate Grants

• Corporate Safety Grants & Compute Credits : Major AI labs and tech entities periodically open targeted grant windows. For example, initiatives like the safety research grants via labs like Thinking Machines Lab offer compute credits (such as Tinker grants up to $50,000) specifically for open-weight model safety analysis.
• OpenAI Policy Grants : Frequently runs programs supporting independent organizations and researchers studying the societal resilience, economic shifts, and policy safeguards required for advanced AI.

Where to Track More:

To see a live, regularly updated master directory of open calls, rolling applications, and large-scale philanthropy rounds (like Lightcone Commons or the Survival and Flourishing Fund), check out the comprehensive AISafety.com Funding Directory.

Yes. There are several grants, fellowships, and research-support programs specifically focused on AI safety, AI alignment, responsible AI, fairness, privacy, and ethical AI. The best fit depends on whether you are an academic researcher, nonprofit, student, engineer, or independent researcher.

AI safety / alignment research funding

• The Alignment Project — Supports independent research on AI alignment and safety. Funding has covered areas such as technical alignment, theoretical approaches, and related foundational work, with grants often ranging from tens of thousands to larger awards.
• OpenAI Safety Fellowship — Supports external researchers, engineers, and practitioners working on advanced AI safety and alignment topics, including safety evaluations, robustness, scalable oversight, privacy-preserving safety methods, and misuse prevention.
• Anthropic Fellows Program for AI Safety Research — Provides funding and mentorship for researchers working on topics such as adversarial robustness, scalable oversight, AI control, model evaluations, and interpretability.

Responsible AI / societal impact funding

• Google AI for Privacy, Safety, and Security Research Award — Supports university and research-institution projects using AI to improve privacy, safety, and security. It welcomes interdisciplinary work, including computer science, law, public policy, social science, psychology, and HCI.
• OpenAI Researcher Access Program — Provides research support through API credits for projects studying responsible AI deployment, societal impacts, alignment, fairness, representation, and safety-related questions.

Other places to look

• National Science Foundation — Funds many AI-related projects through programs in trustworthy AI, human-centered AI, cybersecurity, and social impacts of computing. (Specific calls change frequently.)
• European Research Council and EU research programs — Often support AI governance, trustworthy AI, human-centered AI, and technology ethics research.
• Future of Life Institute — Historically has funded AI safety and long-term risk research through grant programs.
• Machine Intelligence Research Institute — Has supported theoretical AI alignment work and research community development.

Typical funded topics

AI safety grants commonly support work on:

• AI alignment and control
• Interpretability and mechanistic understanding
• Robustness and adversarial testing
• AI evaluations and red-teaming
• Scalable oversight
• Fairness, bias, and discrimination
• AI governance and policy
• Privacy-preserving AI
• Human-AI interaction and societal impacts
• Safety methods for autonomous agents

If you tell me your career stage (student/faculty/independent/nonprofit/company), country, and whether you mean technical AI safety or ethical/governance AI, I can narrow this to the most relevant active opportunities.

Yes. There’s a fairly substantial funding ecosystem specifically for AI safety, alignment, trustworthy AI, and AI ethics. Some opportunities are highly technical, while others focus on governance, fairness, accountability, or societal impacts.

Good places to look

The AI Safety Directory currently tracks dozens of programs, including Open Philanthropy, NSF, AISI, FLI, Schmidt Sciences, Microsoft, Google DeepMind, ACM FAccT, and others.

A few especially interesting opportunities right now

1. Open Philanthropy
Probably one of the most important private funders if your work is genuinely about advanced AI safety. It funds academic researchers, independent researchers, and nonprofits, with technical safety, alignment, interpretability, governance, and evaluation among its areas of interest. The funding is described as rolling rather than tied to one annual deadline.

2. OpenAI / The Alignment Project
In February 2026, OpenAI announced a $7.5 million grant to The Alignment Project to support independent research into mitigations for misaligned AI. This is particularly relevant if you want to work outside a frontier AI lab.

3. Google Research's AI for Privacy, Safety, and Security Research Award
This is broader than existential AI safety. It explicitly welcomes researchers in computer science, law, public policy, social sciences, psychology, HCI, and related fields, which makes it interesting for ethical/responsible AI researchers.

4. NSF
If you're at a U.S. university, NSF is particularly worth investigating. Its programs cover safe and trustworthy machine learning as well as broader responsible-AI research.

5. Stanford HAI seed grants
Stanford's 2026 seed-grant program explicitly includes interpretable, trustworthy, and fair AI, as well as the societal, cultural, and conceptual foundations of AI. The 2026 deadline was August 18, so that particular round has just passed, but it's worth watching for the next cycle.

6. Lightcone Commons
This one is unusually accessible: its current round is expected to distribute $15–25 million, with applications accepted from individuals, nonprofits, educational institutions, for-profits, and non-U.S. organizations. The current deadline is August 23, 2026.

The important distinction

Your best funding source depends heavily on what you mean by AI safety/ethical AI:

• AI alignment / preventing dangerous advanced AI behavior → Open Philanthropy, AISI, Alignment Project, FLI, AI safety-specific funds
• Interpretability / robustness / evaluations → Open Philanthropy, Google DeepMind, AISI, NSF
• AI governance / regulation / policy → Open Philanthropy, FLI, NSF, governance-focused foundations
• Fairness / discrimination / accountability → NSF, ACM FAccT, Microsoft, Google, foundations focused on technology & society
• AI safety in healthcare → NIH/AHRQ, Wellcome, domain-specific funders
• Independent researcher / small project → Lightcone Commons and smaller AI-safety grant programs can be more realistic than conventional academic grants

If you tell me (1) whether you're an individual, nonprofit, startup, or university researcher, (2) your country, and (3) what kind of AI-safety/ethical-AI research you want to do, I can narrow this to the 10–15 grants you're most likely to qualify for, including current deadlines and application links.

Yes, there is a robust and growing landscape of grants specifically dedicated to AI safety, alignment, and ethical AI research . Funding comes from a mix of major tech lab initiatives, philanthropic organizations, and government science agencies.

The primary active sources and programs funding this work include:

• The AI Safety Fund (AISF): Backed by major tech groups and philanthropic partners (including the Frontier Model Forum members like Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, alongside Schmidt Sciences and the McGovern Foundation). It provides multi-million dollar support for independent global research focusing on frontier AI safety, evaluation, cybersecurity, biosecurity, and governance.
• OpenAI Alignment and Safety Grants: OpenAI routinely partners with major global initiatives—such as co-funding large-scale global alignment projects (like The Alignment Project ) and issuing targeted Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to support independent organizations, academic start-ups, and technical alignment research.
• Google DeepMind AI Safety Research Fund: This recurring fund supports external academic and independent researchers working on critical technical challenges like model alignment, interpretability, robustness, and scalable oversight, often combining monetary grants with computing resources.
• Coefficient Giving (CG): Offers grants targeted at individuals and teams working to reduce global catastrophic risks from transformative AI, supporting everything from career transitions and capacity building to technical AI safety research organizations.
• Foresight Institute (AI for Science & Safety Nodes): Provides project funding, local compute resources, and collaborative physical hub spaces (in locations like San Francisco and Berlin) for researchers taking an AI-first approach to safety.
• Open Philanthropy AI Safety and Alignment Grants: One of the largest individual private funders in the space, Open Philanthropy regularly issues RFPs and awards funding for technical alignment, mechanistic interpretability, and evaluating misbehavior in advanced models.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) & NIST (US Government): Programs like the NSF’s interdisciplinary tracks (and multi-agency initiatives like ReDDDoT) explicitly require or focus on embedding ethical, trustworthy, and socially responsible considerations directly into AI research. Concurrently, NIST provides measurement science grants targeted at AI explainability, risk management frameworks, and reliability.
• Anthropic Fellows Program: While structured as a fellowship rather than a traditional cash-only grant, this program supports researchers to collaborate full-time on AI safety with substantial stipends, dedicated compute budgets, and direct mentorship from Anthropic's safety teams.

If you are looking to apply, check the specific submission windows on portals like OpenAI's Research/Grant Announcements, The Frontier Model Forum , or specialized tracking directories like AISafety.com Funding.

Yes, there is a robust and growing ecosystem of grants specifically dedicated to AI safety, technical alignment, and ethical AI research . Funding comes from a mix of major philanthropic organizations, industry-backed consortia, and government bodies.

Major Philanthropic & Private Funders

• Open Philanthropy: The dominant private funder in technical AI safety, Open Philanthropy regularly commits tens of millions of dollars toward reducing risks from advanced AI, focusing on areas like interpretability, alignment, and dangerous-capability evaluations. You can explore their focus areas and historical allocations via Open Philanthropy.
• Schmidt Sciences: Through initiatives like the AI2050 program and targeted RFPs (such as the Science of Trustworthy AI), Schmidt Sciences funds scholars and interdisciplinary research teams working on understanding and controlling frontier AI risks. More information can be found at Schmidt Sciences.
• AI Safety Fund (Frontier Model Forum): Established with backing from major tech developers (including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI) alongside philanthropic foundations, this fund supports independent academic and organizational research focused on frontier model safety, security, and third-party capability evaluations.
• Effective Altruism Funds (Transformative AI Fund): This fund targets early-stage projects ($10k to $150k+) aimed at reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI, technical alignment research, and governance. Details are available through Effective Altruism Funds.
• Mozilla Foundation: Focuses heavily on algorithmic accountability, digital rights, and trustworthy tech. They run recurring fellowship and award cycles (such as Democracy x AI cohorts) funding projects centering on information ecosystem resilience. Check updates at the Mozilla Foundation.
• Foresight Institute: Offers targeted grants and node funding focused on AI safety-critical innovations and safe, AI-driven scientific advancements.

Government and Academic Grant Programs

• National Science Foundation (NSF): Routinely issues interdisciplinary solicitations (such as programs on the Mathematical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence or ReDDDoT —Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies) that explicitly require researchers to integrate ethical, legal, and societal considerations directly into AI system design. You can search active federal calls on Grants.gov.
• UK AI Security Institute (AISI): A government-backed body that runs large-scale grant programs and evaluation projects aimed at technical AI safety and security testing for advanced models.

Tips for Finding and Applying

1. Targeted RFPs over Open Calls: Many foundations (like Foresight or specialized risk funds) have transitioned away from rolling general applications toward focused Request for Proposals (RFPs) targeting specific bottlenecks (e.g., mechanistic interpretability or AI deception).
2. Compute Support: Keep in mind that traditional cash grants are often supplemented by corporate compute credits. Programs run by cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and NVIDIA) frequently partner with grant-awarding bodies to supply the heavy compute necessary for empirical safety work.

Yes. There is a fairly substantial funding ecosystem specifically for AI safety, alignment, trustworthy AI, AI governance, and AI ethics. The best option depends heavily on whether you're an academic, independent researcher, nonprofit, or student.

Strong options to look at

One important distinction: “AI safety” has become two somewhat different funding categories. Technical AI-safety funders often mean things like alignment, interpretability, scalable oversight, robustness, deceptive behavior, evaluations, and control. “Ethical/responsible AI” more often means fairness, discrimination, privacy, transparency, accountability, labor impacts, and governance. The appropriate funders can be quite different.

For example, the NSF's previous Safe Learning-Enabled Systems program explicitly focused on rigorous safety guarantees, robustness, uncertainty, and unexpected behavior—but specifically said that ethics, fairness, accountability, privacy, and trust were outside that program's scope.

If you're looking for funding right now

The most promising places I'd investigate first are:

1. Open Philanthropy — especially if your research is genuinely about advanced-AI safety/alignment.
2. Schmidt Sciences' Science of Trustworthy AI — particularly for academic technical research.
3. AI Safety Fund / other frontier-model safety programs — if you're working on evaluations, red-teaming, or frontier-model risks.
4. NSF's current AI/ML solicitations — if you're at a U.S. university; don't limit the search to programs literally named “AI safety.”
5. FLI — worth monitoring for new RFPs, even though its 2026 fellowships are paused. FLI explicitly says it does not accept unsolicited grant requests and announces opportunities through its grantmaking page/newsletter.

There are also dozens of smaller fellowships, research grants, compute grants, and prizes in the ecosystem; a current directory lists 80+ programs, including Open Philanthropy, FLI, Schmidt Sciences, CAIS, MATS, ARC, Microsoft, DeepMind, Anthropic, and others.

If you tell me (a) your career stage, (b) whether you're at a university/nonprofit/independent, and (c) what kind of AI-safety or ethical-AI research you're considering, I can narrow this to the 5–10 grants you could realistically apply for in 2026, including current deadlines and typical award sizes.

Yes, there is a rapidly growing landscape of grants, fellowships, and funding calls dedicated specifically to AI safety, alignment, and ethical AI research . These are funded by a mix of major philanthropic foundations, tech labs, government bodies, and specialized non-profits.

The primary active sources and programs for AI safety and ethics funding include:

1. Major Foundation & Coalition Grants

• Open Philanthropy AI Safety Research : One of the single largest institutional funders in the space, Open Philanthropy routinely deploys tens of millions of dollars toward technical AI safety, interpretability, and dangerous-capability evaluations.
• Schmidt Sciences (AI2050 Program) : Founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, this initiative provides multi-year fellowships and project grants to early-career scholars working to ensure that transformative AI is beneficial to society.
• Transformative AI Fund (Effective Altruism Funds) : Focuses on early-stage projects ($10,000 to $150,000) aimed at reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI, technical alignment research, and field-building infrastructure.
• Foresight Institute (AI for Science & Safety Grants) : Offers grants, decentralized co-working spaces/nodes (in places like San Francisco and Berlin), and compute access for safety-focused innovation.
• The AI Safety Research Fund (Manifund) : Streamlines smaller, early-stage grants for experimental or unconventional safety projects that might be overlooked by traditional bureaucratic grantmakers.

2. Lab-Backed and Collaborative Funding

• Anthropic AI Safety and Security Fellows Program : A prominent program providing researchers with generous weekly stipends, heavy monthly compute budgets (around $15,000 $15,000$1 5,0 0 0 /month), and direct mentorship from Anthropic's safety researchers.
• Multi-Agent AI Safety Calls : Major labs and groups (such as Google DeepMind alongside Schmidt Sciences and the Cooperative AI Foundation) periodically release multi-million dollar targeted funding calls for global researchers studying multi-agent safety and cooperative AI.
• Constellation Astra Fellowship : A fully funded, immersive program based in Berkeley that provides high-end compute resources and mentorship to land participants into high-impact safety roles or launch new projects.

3. Academic and Government Initiatives

• National Science Foundation (NSF) Responsible AI Program : US federal funding supporting academic institutions and interdisciplinary researchers working on trustworthy, ethical, and safe AI systems [1.21].
• Stanford Human-Centered AI (HAI) Grants : Regularly funds Stanford-affiliated research teams subject to ethics and societal impact reviews.
• The Mozilla Foundation (Democracy x AI / Awards) : Funds open-source projects, fellowships, and cohorts focusing on algorithmic accountability, digital rights, and information ecosystem resilience.

If you are looking to apply, check specific requirements on platform hubs like the Directory of AI Security & Safety Fellowships or Effective Altruism Funds to match your specific focus (e.g., technical alignment vs. governance/policy).

Yes. There are several grant programs and funding sources specifically aimed at AI safety, AI alignment, trustworthy AI, responsible AI, and ethical AI research. The best fit depends on whether you are an academic researcher, nonprofit, startup, independent researcher, or policy researcher.

Major AI safety / alignment funding sources

Responsible AI / ethical AI grants

• National Science Foundation programs support responsible AI research areas such as fairness, transparency, accountability, human-AI interaction, and AI governance. Programs include broader responsible technology and AI research initiatives rather than only “AI safety.”

• Google’s AI for Privacy, Safety, and Security Research Award supports university and research-institution projects involving AI safety, privacy, security, policy, social science, and human-computer interaction.

Corporate research grants and programs

• OpenAI Grants has run grant programs related to AI safety, well-being, and societal impacts of AI.
• Anthropic has supported external AI safety research through programs such as research collaborations, grants, and fellowships (availability varies by program cycle).

Common research areas that get funded

Projects are often competitive when they address topics such as:

• AI alignment and scalable oversight
• Interpretability and mechanistic understanding
• Robustness and adversarial testing
• AI evaluation and red teaming
• AI governance and regulation
• Bias, fairness, and discrimination
• Privacy-preserving AI
• Human-centered AI design
• AI misuse prevention
• Safety standards and benchmarks

Where to look for smaller or early-stage funding

If you are an early-career researcher or independent researcher, also consider:

• AI safety fellowships with research stipends
• University AI ethics centers
• Seed grants from AI governance nonprofits
• Workshops and conference travel grants
• Research assistantships through AI safety labs

If you tell me your country, career stage (student/PhD/faculty/independent/nonprofit), and research topic, I can narrow this to grants you are actually eligible for.