Some AI safety funders can take months to decide; others confirm in days. I’ve been on both sides of the grant application and know how crucial an early “yes” can be; “funding projects fast” has always been a core tenet of Manifund.
Four new opportunities have popped up around the extended Manifund universe, several with a short-fuse (that is, due in the next few days):
This is a new $1m grant round! Organized by Matt Brooks, Anton Makiievskyi and Melissa Samworth, their team is earnest and excited to improve the entire funding landscape:
We want to build the most comprehensive public repository of donation opportunities in existential AI safety space with essential information like up-to-date funding needs, theory of impact, references, endorsements, team track record, and more…
Currently, most AI safety funding is distributed privately by a few large funds - which are great and remain the most effective way to support AI safety; nevertheless we believe a more public, agile approach will benefit the ecosystem, and be particularly useful for smaller AI safety grants that are getting the least attention from existing funders.
… all of which is music to my ears.
They’ve recruited 3 Manifund regrantors (Ryan Kidd, Gavin Leech, Marcus Abramovitch) as the initial reviewers; Manifund is also helping with fiscal sponsorship and payouts. If you already have a Manifund proposal, you can import it with one click:
One day my friend Leo Gao messaged me “hi i would like help with the logistics of microgranting”. He followed up with a doc to review. And then, in an act of sheer courage, unrivaled before or since — launched the program on the very same day:
I want to fund projects to
make AGI go well for all of humanity, interpreted in a broad sense (as long as you can justify how your proposal contributes!). I want unusual ambitious ideas - things that others might be hesitant to fund. I don’t want the typical academia incremental paperslop. I’m tired of academia grantspeak. I want things that are big if true. For the purpose of this program, I’m[ruling thinkers in not out].
Leo’s already made 10 grants of $10k, primarily to technical AI safety work, and is still looking for more good opportunities.
Last year, we were marveling at the cost-effectiveness of producing AI safety videos. I remember thinking: “There really ought to be something like MATS, but for TikTok creators”.
Enter Akshyae Singh. He took this idea and hit the ground running, organizing the first cohort in January. Now he’s looking for creators for cohort 2.0:
We’re looking to bet on promising creators who want to lead this revolution — to create high-quality, deeply thoughtful video content educating the public about AI and its societal and economic implications.
If that’s you, we’ll fly you to San Francisco to go all in. Frame offers up-and-coming creators a chance to hone their craft and learn from the best. They’re also offering a new track for creators to embed inside AI safety orgs. Apply now!
This one is mine! Since launching Surplus last month, I’ve raised $1.5m to fund this inaugural batch, interviewed 20 founders, and am now sending out our first acceptances. I’m still in the midst of reviewing & interviewing folks, but am always on the lookout for promising founders to join:
Surplus is an incubator for software startups, organized by
ManifundandMox— to createmassive public goodin the age of transformative AI. It’s a 3 month program, starting late July in SF. We provide seed funding, advice, peers, intros, and space to focus.Now is an excellent time to start a for-profit, given
[vast torrents of funding]available from Anthropic employees and OpenAI Foundation. 501c3s can pay for for-profit services, and invest in for-profit corps. There’s a $100B market waiting to be constructed;shovels waiting to be sold.Building great software takes more than coding.
Product taste, visual design, distribution, sales and marketingare all things that 2026 LLMs still fail at. We’ve developed these supplementary skills needed to ship successful products, and would love to foster them in a new generation of founders.
Applications close in two days; please forward to your software-minded friends~
PS: other funders that we recommend for their speediness include Bluedot’s Rapid Grants and Jueyan Zhang’s AISTOF; lmk if you know of others!