AI Safety Fund Initiates First Round of Research Grants
At the FMF, we believe that fostering safe AI development and deployment requires cultivating a vibrant research community. That's why we're supporting technical research to improve AI safety and enable independent, standardized evaluations of frontier AI capabilities and risks.
Read more about the AI Safety Fund in the update from the fund's independent administrator Meridian Prime below.
The AI Safety Fund (AISF) is "a $10 million+ initiative, born from a collaborative vision of leading AI developers and philanthropic partners." Supporters include Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, alongside foundations including the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Schmidt Sciences, and Jaan Tallinn.
The Meridian Institute independently administers the AISF, awarding research grants to independent researchers addressing critical safety risks from frontier AI systems.
The fund aims to expand the AI safety research field, promote responsible frontier model development, minimize risks, and "enable independent, standardized evaluations of capabilities and safety." It exclusively supports research on deployed versions of state-of-the-art, general-purpose AI models.
The initial grant round supports researchers investigating frontier AI safety, particularly those developing "new methods for evaluating the capabilities and risks of frontier models, including evaluations, red-teaming, and benchmarking." Public announcements of grantee awards will appear on the AISF website in July, with research outcomes shared publicly.
Future open call rounds will prioritize research in three core areas:
- Identifying safety-critical risks posed by frontier models - Evaluating and assessing strategies for addressing such risks - Implementing mitigations to prevent these risks from occurring
Interested researchers should complete the research interest form for participation opportunities.