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AI Forge is a joint DARPA-NSF initiative, developed in close collaboration with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation at NIST, to close what DARPA calls the mission-ready AI gap for national security. It is worth tracking early because of what it is structurally, not just what it funds.
Rather than running a conventional solicitation, DARPA and NSF are establishing a standing forum comprising industry, university and government participants that will identify, fund and manage university-led research efforts against challenges defined in the AI Forge Critical AI Challenges for National Security report - a report that synthesizes expert input from industry and government into 15 research challenges across three thrust areas.
A nonprofit entity will administer the forum. The three priority areas are drawn directly from America's AI Action Plan: AI interpretability, AI control, and adversarial robustness.
That is an unusually concrete scoping for a national-security AI programme, and it signals where federal money for foundational AI safety and security research is heading - toward making AI reliable and predictable in high-stakes settings, understandable to its operators, and secure in contested environments.
DARPA reported receiving nearly 130 responses to the AI Forge RFI, which it characterized as validating urgent nationwide demand for this kind of public-private ecosystem.
For academic groups, the significance is that AI Forge is explicitly designed to channel talent through fast-paced, high-risk/high-reward, university-led project ventures and to enable exchange of people and ideas across universities, frontier AI companies and government - a route into national-security AI funding that does not require becoming a defense prime. Interested parties should respond to or monitor RFI DARPA-SN-26-80 on SAM.
gov and watch both the DARPA AI Forge program page and NSF's TIP directorate page for the first funded project ventures.
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Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: AI Forge is structured as a forum of industry, university and government participants that will identify, fund and manage university-led research efforts, administered by a nonprofit entity rather than run as a direct DARPA contract vehicle. The primary intended performers are U.S. universities and academic research teams; frontier AI companies are explicitly named as participating in a supporting capacity, and government participants including NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation are part of the governance structure. Research must address the challenges set out in the AI Forge Critical AI Challenges for National Security report, which defines 15 research challenges across three thrust areas, with priority on AI interpretability, AI control and adversarial robustness as identified in America's AI Action Plan. As of the latest available information DARPA and NSF had published the report and a Request for Information, DARPA-SN-26-80, available through SAM.gov, and had received nearly 130 RFI responses; a costed solicitation with named eligibility criteria, award amounts and deadlines had not yet been issued. Prospective applicants should therefore treat this as a programme to position for rather than apply to today: read the Critical AI Challenges report, respond to or monitor the RFI, and track the DARPA AI Forge program page and the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships AI Forge page for the first project venture calls. All eligibility, funding and deadline details must be confirmed against the official solicitation when it is released. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows no per-award figure has been published. AI Forge is described as issuing fast-paced, high-risk, high-reward project ventures to university-led teams, and at the time of writing DARPA and NSF had released the Critical AI Challenges for National Security report and an RFI (DARPA-SN-26-80) rather than a costed solicitation. amount_min of 1,000,000 and amount_max of 5,000,000 are an estimate benchmarked against DARPA's comparable fast-turn academic instruments - AI Exploration awards run to roughly USD 1M for 18-month feasibility studies, while a multi-year university-led project venture of the kind AI Forge describes would sit materially higher. Treat these figures as planning context. The operative detail for budgeting is structural rather than numerical: a nonprofit entity will administer the forum, so the contracting path to a university is likely to run through that administrator rather than through a direct DARPA contract, which typically changes both the timeline and the indirect cost treatment. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
DARPA and NSF AI Forge for University-Led Project Ventures in AI Interpretability, AI Control and Adversarial Robustness for National Security is funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), in collaboration with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) at NIST. 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.
Violence Against Women Discretionary Grants for Indian Tribal Governments is sponsored by Department of Justice. To increase tribal capacity to respond to violent crimes against Indian women, and to develop and strengthen victim services in cases involving violent crimes against Indian women. This listing is currently active. Program number: 16.587. Last updated on 2024-11-26.
The NSF CISE Future Computing Research (Future CoRe) program supports research in computing and communication foundations, intelligent systems, and network systems. The program funds innovative research that advances the frontiers of computing including artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and robotics. This is one of NSF's largest computing research programs with $280 million in total budget. Projects can address fundamental computing challenges, novel AI architectures, scalable intelligent systems, and next-generation network infrastructure.
Congress gave NIST $55 million for AI safety research and a permanent standards center. CAISI now has 17 AI Action Plan taskings, a MITRE partnership, and growing influence over how AI gets built. Here's how researchers and companies can engage.
Read articleOn June 1, DARPA and NSF announced AI Forge — a jointly governed forum that will fund university-led research on three thrusts: AI interpretability, AI control, and adversarial robustness. The RFI on sam.gov closes June 22, 2026, at 5:00 PM ET. Project Ventures awards run roughly $750K to $3M with one-year durations and multiple awards expected annually. Administration runs through a nonprofit, intellectual property will be shared via open-source licensing, and CAISI at NIST is the third partner. Here is what the 15 priority research challenges look like and how U.S. universities should respond.
Read articleThe RFI closed June 22. Now the forum is standing up. AI Forge is a jointly governed, university-led venture funding interpretability, control, and adversarial robustness in one-year Project Ventures — here's how the 15 challenges, the CAISI tie, and the nonprofit administrator reshape who gets funded.
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