TLDR: what is the grant round?
grantmaking.ai is launching a $1M grant round, distributing $5k to $50k per successful application to people and projects working to reduce x-risk from AI.
Applications will be reviewed by Gavin Leech, Ryan Kidd, and Marcus Abramovitch. We aim to make all funding decisions by July 28th. Applications submitted by July 13th are guaranteed a priority review. You can still apply after July 13th, and we will make our best effort to review late submissions as long as funding remains.
Grant applications will be mostly public, though we allow certain sensitive details to be kept private. Even if you are not applying, we invite you to join the platform to review and comment. We have set aside $100k of the budget to be given to top commenters as regranting budgets, so please share your thoughts and help us pick out awesome projects!
Who are we?
grantmaking.ai was initialized by Anton Makiievskyi, who is funding this round and brought the team together, built by Matt Brooks (lead dev) and Melissa Samworth (ui/ux), and advised by Austin Chen with Manifund handling grant distribution.
Why we’re building this platform & launching a grant round
You can read our initial pre-launch post to learn more about what we’re building and why.
In short, we want to build the most comprehensive public repository of donation opportunities in existential AI safety space with essential information like up-to-date funding needs, theory of impact, references, endorsements, team track record, and more on top.
Donors will be able to coordinate with each other discussing best opportunities and sharing what they found, and applicants can surface their request in front of many donors simultaneously
We launch this round to gather an initial set of funding opportunities, invite donors, grantmakers and the broad community to participate by sharing their endorsements, commenting and adding useful information to the database.
As more capital and individual funders enter the space, we aim to provide the public coordination infrastructure to help funding flow faster and better. Currently, most AI safety funding is distributed privately by a few large funds - which are great and remain the most effective way to support AI safety; Nevertheless we believe a more public, agile approach will benefit the ecosystem, and be particularly useful for smaller AI safety grants that are getting the least attention from existing funders.
It’s an open platform to find, evaluate, and fund AI x-risk work.
We serve both sides of the ecosystem:
- Grantees: post your org / project on our platform, indicate you’re raising funds, and get seen by many funders in the space
- Funders: use our platform and the signals attached (like public and expert comments) to quickly find and fund high quality AI Safety projects
On the platform, you can:
- Apply for funding - click here to view the details of the current round and to apply
- Review, endorse, and comment on grant applications, projects and orgs. We think communities like EA and LessWrong have tons of high quality takes that we would like to centralize in one place to help funders find the best funding opportunities
- Explore the data and fund projects. You can find projects to fund yourself and donate directly, or reach out to chat with us to get access to the private comments from grant reviewers and other funders on our platform. Or just reach out if you have any ideas or questions on how to improve the funding ecosystem, infrastructure, and coordination for AI Safety.
Grant round details
Who should apply: Projects aimed at reducing existential risks and risks of permanent drastic curtailment of humanity’s potential. We’ll consider applications for career changes or exploratory work, on the basis of work done previously
Who is reviewing:
- Gavin Leech: co-founder of Arb Research, AI PhD
- Looking for: "critiques, critiques of critiques, evals, sensemaking, weird maybe-cool ideas, tools for human augmentation."
- Ryan Kidd: CEO & Co-Founder of MATS
- Marcus Abramovitch: professional trader, poker player and forecaster, personally donated over $1.5M to high impact causes
Commitments from applicants: We request updating your project page if you receive funding from other sources while the round lasts. If you receive a grant from this round you commit to provide brief, public quarterly updates for the duration of your project.
Priority deadline: Apply before July 13 for priority review.
Review period: Decisions will be made on a rolling basis through July 28.
No legal entity required: Individual applicants are welcome; grants distributed via Manifund.