1,000+ Opportunities
Find the right grant
Search federal, foundation, and corporate grants with AI — or browse by agency, topic, and state.
Wellcome Discovery Awards provide long-term flexible funding for established researchers and their teams pursuing bold, creative research, and while the scheme is not ring-fenced for artificial intelligence, AI and computational approaches to biomedical challenges are explicitly in scope - machine learning for drug discovery, AI-driven clinical diagnostics, computational genomics and data science for health equity all sit comfortably within it.
The scheme's structure changed materially in September 2026 and the change is the main reason to look at it now. The deadline-based round closed on 22 September 2026; when the scheme reopened on 23 September 2026 it became always open, with no deadlines and applications accepted at any time.
For a research team building an AI-in-health programme, that removes the usual problem of having to align a multi-year compute and data-access plan to an annual submission window.
A second change matters just as much and cuts the other way: from 29 October 2026, only applications from lead applicants based at eligible administering organisations in the UK and in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia are accepted. Applications submitted before 28 October 2026 are assessed under the previous, broader location eligibility rules.
Researchers in the US, EU, Australia and elsewhere who were previously eligible are therefore outside the scheme from late October 2026 onward, and should confirm their organisation's status before investing in an application.
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 →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Open to established research leaders and their teams - researchers with a track record of delivering significant research programmes - rather than early-career investigators, who are served by separate Wellcome schemes. Funding runs for up to eight years, with an average award of approximately 3.5 million pounds; awards above 5 million pounds attract additional scrutiny. The scheme is not restricted to artificial intelligence but explicitly welcomes AI and computational approaches to biomedical challenges, including machine learning for drug discovery, AI-driven clinical diagnostics, computational genomics and data science for health equity. The critical eligibility change concerns location: from 29 October 2026, only applications from lead applicants based at eligible administering organisations in the UK and in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia will be accepted, while any application submitted before 28 October 2026 is assessed under the previous location eligibility rules. Applicants outside those regions should verify their position before starting. The scheme closed its final deadline-based round on 22 September 2026 and reopened on 23 September 2026 as an always-open scheme with no submission deadlines, so applications can be made at any time. Because Wellcome revised both the location rules and the submission model within weeks of each other in autumn 2026, confirm current eligibility, the administering organisation list and award parameters directly with Wellcome before preparing an application. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows wellcome does not publish a floor for Discovery Awards, which makes the range an inference from the figures it does publish. The average award is approximately 3.5 million pounds, and awards above 5 million pounds are subject to additional scrutiny - a soft ceiling rather than a hard one. Converting at roughly 1.26 dollars to the pound gives an average near 4.4 million dollars and an additional-scrutiny threshold near 6.3 million dollars, which is the basis for amount_max of 6,300,000. The amount_min of 1,000,000 dollars is an estimate of the practical lower bound for a scheme designed around team science over up to eight years rather than a published Wellcome figure; smaller single-investigator projects are generally a poor fit for this scheme regardless of eligibility. The eight-year duration is the feature that distinguishes this from comparable large awards and changes how AI-in-health work should be budgeted: compute costs eight years out are genuinely unpredictable, and Wellcome's flexible-funding model is more accommodating of mid-award redirection than a fixed-milestone grant would be. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Wellcome Discovery Awards Always-Open Scheme for Established Research Leaders Including AI, Machine Learning and Data Science Approaches to Health is funded by Wellcome Trust. 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.