NVIDIA Academic Grant Program - AI Inference, Agents, and Systems Software

The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program awards up to $60,000 to PhD students whose doctoral research advances accelerated computing and its applications, with the program explicitly encouraging submissions in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and embodied and physical AI. Beyond the funding, fellows are paired with NVIDIA researchers and complete a mandatory in-person summer internship at an NVIDIA office, giving recipients direct access to the company's research organization and hardware. Applications are reviewed competitively over roughly eight weeks by a committee of more than 80 senior NVIDIA technical staff led by Chief Scientist Bill Dally, evaluating student quality, research quality, and relevance to NVIDIA's research domains; NVIDIA notes that many qualified candidates go unselected because the number of awards is limited. The application window closes in mid-September each year for fellowships supporting the following academic year — the most recent published cycle closed 3:00 p.m. Pacific on September 15 for the 2026-2027 academic year — so applicants should confirm the current deadline on the program page before preparing materials.