1,000+ Opportunities
Find the right grant
Search federal, foundation, and corporate grants with AI — or browse by agency, topic, and state.
This listing may be outdated. Verify details at the official source before applying.
Find similar grantsAI for Individual Rights is sponsored by Human Rights Foundation (HRF). HRF's AI for Individual Rights program supports open-source, privacy-protecting artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the hands of dissidents and exposes how AI is used by autocrats as a tool of repression.
Get a weekly digest of new grants like this
A free weekly digest of new foundation and federal funding opportunities as they're added to Granted. Unsubscribe anytime.
Or search similar grants →Extracted from the official opportunity page/RFP to help you evaluate fit faster.
HRF’s AI Fund Supports 10 Innovative Projects - Human Rights Foundation HRF’s AI Fund Supports 10 Innovative Projects NEW YORK (May 12, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce 10 new grants from its AI for Individual Rights Fund .
These gifts reflect the dual mission of the AI for Individual Rights program: to expose how authoritarian regimes weaponize AI while helping human rights defenders resist with open-source, sovereignty-boosting AI tools.
Grantees include researchers exposing AI-driven repression, activists harnessing automation to scale their campaigns, educators bringing personalized AI training to those who need it most, and developers making AI private and accessible for activists worldwide. These grants empower the innovators ensuring that AI advances as a force for freedom, not repression.
HRF’s latest round of AI grantees include: In East Africa, many are locked out of AI tools that require credit cards, Western bank accounts, or costly subscriptions. Noelyne Sumba, a director of the Bitcoin wallet service Machankura Kenya, saw this firsthand and launched The Ark, an AI assistant where users can pay per AI-related task or per day with bitcoin over the Lightning Network.
This allows for fast, permissionless, and low-cost payments, regardless of jurisdiction. Instead of expensive subscriptions, users can pay only for queries they need, ensuring affordable access to AI for writing, translation, coding, and more. This grant will support technical development, outreach, translation services, and free tier expansion for students and educators.
The Open Anonymity Project Today, using powerful, personalized AI often means handing over sensitive data to centralized providers. The Open Anonymity Project is a research and engineering effort building privacy-focused AI. They have created the unlinkable inference technique for users to send anonymous questions to closed AI models like ChatGPT or Claude, which acts like a virtual private network (VPN) for AI inference .
The group is now bringing privacy protection to personalized AI agents. This means an agent would be able to learn from a user’s sensitive information without handing all of it over to tech companies that could ultimately be compelled to share such data with authoritarian regimes. With this grant, human rights defenders can scale their impact using powerful AI tools without totally sacrificing privacy.
Learn more about The Open Anonymity Project Running large language models (LLMs) locally allows private, offline AI interactions. But devices like laptops and phones lack the power and infrastructure to run top models themselves. Open-source developer 0xSero works to make the most powerful open models capable of running on small devices.
He researches and develops compression methods that identify and preserve the most important parts of a model to allow it to run with a fraction of the usual required resources. He also works to improve the applications needed to run these models locally.
HRF’s grant will fund the equipment, contributor support, and operational costs needed for 0xSero to make state-of-the-art models usable locally on everyday devices, advancing privacy-protecting AI for users who face regime surveillance. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is building one of the world’s most advanced AI-powered systems for surveillance and social control, with much of it hidden from public view.
Human Rights in China (HRIC) is a nongovernmental organization that monitors and promotes human rights in China. It is pushing to expose state surveillance. Through research, reporting, and monthly briefings, HRIC will track the CCP’s evolving tactics of digital control and AI-driven repression to drive global accountability and help at-risk defenders adapt, evade, and resist.
HRF’s grant will support this work, strengthening those on the frontlines of the fight for freedom. Learn more about Human Rights in China Confidential Computing for Freedom Tech Confidential computing is a technique that developers use to keep users’ data private, but it is still very difficult to deploy in practice. Confidential Computing for Freedom Tech is a new project that aims to simplify the process.
The project will create educational resources and a software platform that helps automate confidential computing. As more developers adopt this powerful technique, they can build private AI tools, confidential agents, and other privacy-preserving technologies critical for human rights defenders. HRF’s grant will support the development of this critical infrastructure to help scale secure, privacy-first tools .
Most AI tools turn user data into a liability. They store, retain, and leave it vulnerable to misuse by authoritarian regimes. Maple AI flips that model.
It’s an AI assistant offering end-to-end encrypted interactions through a simple interface. Users can prompt powerful open-weight models like Gemma and GPT-OSS without their data being stored or exposed. For those at risk of authoritarian surveillance, this means the ability to research, strategize, and communicate without fear.
HRF’s grant will support Maple’s efforts to improve reasoning, coding, and tool-building capabilities, advance document generation, and expand outreach to human rights defenders. Learn more about Maple AI AI agents could become powerful allies for dissidents, but they are not always equipped to operate beyond the reach of surveillance, censorship, and financial control.
Software developer Breno Brito is building and maintaining Freedom Skills , a GitHub repository that gives AI agents these capabilities. It contains validated, high-quality “skills,” or pre-written code, that instructs agents to work with privacy-preserving and sovereignty-granting technologies (like Bitcoin for uncensorable payments and Nostr for censorship-resistant communication).
Brito will also use a vouching mechanism to enable trusted skill discovery. HRF’s support will expand this repository so dissidents empowered with these agents can easily coordinate, transact, and operate without relying on centralized services. Learn more about Freedom Skills An estimated one million political prisoners worldwide rely on civil society advocates to help secure their release.
The work to achieve their release is slow, complex, and highly sensitive. The World Liberty Congress , a pro-democracy organization , is building Enclave. free to accelerate this process and make it safer.
It lets advocates securely upload case files, generate rapid AI-driven analysis, and get instant answers to key questions, all within secure enclaves (hardware environments that keep all interactions private).
Originally imagined by Berta Valle, Nicaraguan human rights defender, and vibe coded at HRF’s first AI Hack for Freedom event, this grant will help complete the project’s development and drive adoption for faster casework turnaround, resulting in a scalable, privacy-first tool for human rights defenders. Many living under authoritarian regimes lack access to education on using AI effectively, securely, and in the service of freedom.
Autumn Domingo, co-founder of Generation Bitcoin, is expanding her work from Bitcoin education into AI training to address this. She is building Gen AI, a hands-on AI program for those living in authoritarian regimes with a focus on Gen Z and women. Participants will learn the risks of closed-source AI, build software by vibe coding, and securely deploy personal AI agents.
The program will also connect them with employers and advocacy groups seeking AI talent. HRF’s grant will help ensure the youth living under repression can harness AI effectively to defend freedom. Learn more about China Dissent Monitor HRF’s AI for Individual Rights program is the world’s first to support open-source AI tools in the hands of dissidents while exposing AI used by autocrats as a tool of repression.
Through grants, research, education, and events, HRF works to ensure that AI serves freedom and democracy instead of the dictators who seek to repress these ideals. Learn more about HRF’s AI for Individual Rights program and the tools you can use today to safely and privately advance freedom work at HRF. org/AI .
HRF is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. Gifts can be made at HRF.
org/AIFund, and proposals for support can be submitted to HRF. org/AIGrants . Follow @HRF on X for more updates on our programs promoting freedom and human rights around the world.
HRF Succeeds in UN Petition for Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activist Owen Chow NEW YORK (July 27, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) welcomes the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) decision that the detention of Hong Kong activist Owen Chow is arbitrary and in violation of international law.
HRF submits a petition to the United Nations on behalf of Pastor Jin, Pastor Gao, and Pastor Wang in China NEW YORK (May 20, 2026) — Today, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) submitted an individual complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) on behalf of Pastors Jin “Ezra” Mingri (金明日), Gao Yingjia (高颖佳), and Wang Lin (王林), who are all currently detained in China for exercising their freedom of religion.
Empower Change With Your Donation Join us in helping save lives and stand up to tyranny. HRF and Perseus Strategies Petition UN on behalf of El Salvador Lawyers Ruth López and Enrique Anaya NEW YORK (Aug.
18, 2026) — Last week, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) and Perseus Strategies submitted a complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Salvadoran lawyers Ruth López and Enrique Anaya, urging the body to declare their detention arbitrary and in violation of international law. Russia designates HRF as “undesirable” in response to Tyranny Tracker’s “fully authoritarian” assessment NEW YORK (Aug.
6, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) condemns the decision by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to officially designate HRF and its work as “undesirable. ” HRF Petitions UN in Case of Dr. Mahrang Baloch NEW YORK (Aug.
5, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF), Freedom House, and Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) filed a petition with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) on behalf of renowned Baloch human rights defender, Dr. Mahrang Baloch, who is serving a life sentence in Pakistan.
HRF Succeeds in UN Petition for Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activist Owen Chow NEW YORK (July 27, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) welcomes the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) decision that the detention of Hong Kong activist Owen Chow is arbitrary and in violation of international law. Hit enter to search or ESC to close Join the cause by subscribing to our newsletter.
CCP Disruption Initiative Venezuela Solidarity Fund
According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Open-source developers, researchers, activists, and educators working to advance privacy-protecting AI for freedom. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
AI for Individual Rights is funded by Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
DRL's Global Rapid Response Fund, DFOP0019705, closes August 31, 2026 with a single award of $9,569,050 and subgrants of $10,000 to $100,000. Only 40 percent of the award can flow through as subgrants, which means the majority of a rapid-response fund is not rapid-response money at all. Here is how to read that, and who is actually built to win it.
Read articleThe Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has opened NOFO DFOP0019327, a $2.96 million single-award competition to build a global coalition countering transnational repression — the practice of governments reaching across borders to silence dissidents, journalists, and diaspora communities. Applications from nonprofits, think tanks, and NGOs are due August 12, 2026. Here is what transnational repression is, what DRL is actually buying, who is eligible, and how to build a competitive proposal for a winner-take-all award.
Read articleOn August 26, 2026, NSF named the STC class of 2026: TEMPEST at Michigan State, GENIE at Northwestern, and a human-robot co-adaptation center at UT Austin. $90 million total, $6 million a year each. The 2023 class was four centers and $120 million. The award size is intact; the shelf space shrank 25 percent — and that is the number that should reshape how you plan a center proposal.
Read article