AI Safety & Existential Risk Funding

Foresight's AI for Science and Safety Nodes RFP is a small-cheque, high-variance programme aimed at work that conventional funders will not touch, and it is one of the few AI safety calls verifiably open with a future deadline of 31 October 2026. The framing joins two problems: ensuring a safe transition to highly capable AI, and using AI to unlock scientific breakthroughs. Proposals sit in one of three layers. Local compute covers community-owned and controlled computational infrastructure - an explicitly decentralist counterweight to frontier-lab concentration. Coordination and accountability covers human-AI interaction, supercollaboration and AI risk assessment mechanisms. AI-first science covers automated nanotechnology, whole-brain emulation and frontier biotechnology. The single most important screening criterion is stated plainly: Foresight wants projects where AI is the primary engine of progress, not projects where AI is, in its words, tapped onto an existing research program - so an established lab adding a machine learning component to ongoing work is the archetype of what gets rejected. Evaluation weights alignment with a focus area, impact on AI existential risk reduction, feasibility within short AGI timelines, execution capability, and high-risk high-reward potential. Two conditions are non-negotiable: all outputs must be open-sourced, and applicants must commit to active participation at Foresight's San Francisco or Berlin nodes, which makes this poorly suited to a purely remote team. Application is a single Airtable form with a roughly three-month review.

The Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) is a virtual fund organizing grant applications and recommending grants to organizations addressing the long-term survival and flourishing of sentient life. SFF runs main S-Process rounds plus themed rounds, with the 2026 cycle featuring three new themed S-Process rounds in addition to the Main Round. Strong focus on AI safety, AI alignment, biosecurity, existential risk research, longtermist policy, and technical AI governance. Funded organizations include leading AI safety nonprofits and university research groups. Grant recommendations are made via SFF's distinctive S-Process collaborative evaluation. Rolling and round-based application accepted.