AI Safety Grants

AI Safety Aachen e.V. | Förderrunde 2026

AI Safety Aachen e.V. is a registered nonprofit based in Aachen, Germany, dedicated to advancing research and education in AI safety. We are now accepting applications for research grants to support individuals working on reducing risks from advanced AI systems.

We are a small, fast-moving fund. We aim to make decisions within four weeks of receiving a complete application and keep bureaucracy to a minimum.

Grants are tax-free under §3 Nr. 44 EStG and do not count toward the income thresholds that determine eligibility for statutory health insurance (gesetzliche Krankenversicherung / Familienversicherung). For students and researchers in Germany, this means you can receive a grant without affecting your insurance status.

What We Fund

We support work across the full spectrum of AI safety, including but not limited to:

Research areas

  • Technical alignment and interpretability

  • AI evaluations and auditing

  • AI control and oversight mechanisms

  • Governance, policy, and regulatory frameworks for advanced AI

  • Technical governance research on how technology places pressure on or undermines existing laws, decision-making processes, and democratic structures, and how to address this

  • AI and democracy disinformation, algorithmic influence, automated decision systems in public contexts, and approaches to strengthening democratic resilience in the face of powerful AI

  • Biosecurity, autonomous wars, nuclear risk prevention and other intersections with catastrophic risk

Funding types

We are flexible on what costs we cover. Examples include:

  • Living stipend — to free up time for research during a defined period

  • Travel and accommodation — for fellowships, conferences, working groups, or parliamentary consultations

  • Compute — cloud credits (AWS, GCP, Azure, RunPod, etc.) or contribution toward local hardware

  • Software and API access — subscriptions, model API credits, research tools, and other digital resources

  • Literature and courses — books, course fees, database access

If you're unsure whether your costs qualify, just describe them in the application — we'd rather see a creative but honest cost breakdown than a conservative one that underrepresents your actual needs.

Who Should Apply

We welcome applications from:

  • Students (Bachelor's, Master's, PhD) working on AI safety

  • Independent researchers without institutional affiliation

  • Early-career researchers looking to explore AI safety full-time or part-time

  • Practitioners transitioning into AI safety work

  • Participants in our upskilling programs who want to pursue independent research — no prior professional experience in a related field is required

You do not need to be based in Germany or affiliated with a German institution. We fund individuals internationally.

You may not apply if you are currently registered as a member of AI Safety Aachen e.V. in the Vereinsregister at the Amtsgericht Aachen, or if you currently hold a board position.

What We're Looking For

There is no fixed template for what we fund. We care most about:

  1. Impact potential — does this work meaningfully reduce risks from advanced AI?

  2. Tractability — is this achievable in the proposed timeframe with the proposed resources?

  3. Exceptional ability — we look for people who are genuinely outstanding, however that manifests. This might be prior research, publications, or professional experience — but it might equally be exceptional academic results achieved unusually fast, standout performance in competitions or upskilling programs, a track record of building things independently, or simply a demonstrated capacity to learn very quickly and execute. We fund talent, not credentials.

  4. Cost-effectiveness — are the requested resources proportionate to the expected output?

We are open to early-stage and speculative work. We do not require prior publications or institutional credentials. If you've been through our upskilling program and want to pursue something independently, we want to hear from you.

We strongly encourage applicants to think carefully about cost-efficiency. Please consider whether open-source or free-tier alternatives exist for compute or software needs, and whether costs can be shared with other programs or institutions. We will not penalize honest, well-reasoned requests — but we do expect applicants to have thought about why each line item is necessary.

How to Apply

Send the following to mail@aisafetyaachen.org with the subject line "Grant Application — [Your Name]":

  1. CV / Resume (PDF, any format)

  2. Research Proposal (max. 2 pages)

    • What are you working on and why does it matter for AI safety?

    • What will you concretely do during the funding period?

    • What does success look like?

  3. Cost Breakdown

    • Itemized list of requested funding with brief justification for each item

    • Proposed funding period (start date, end date)

    • Total amount requested

  4. Short cover note (optional, max. half a page) — anything you want us to know that doesn't fit elsewhere

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. We aim to respond within four weeks of receiving a complete application.-----Questions

Feel free to reach out at mail@aisafetyaachen.org before applying if you have questions about eligibility, scope, or fit. We're happy to give quick informal feedback on whether an application makes sense before you invest time in writing it up.-----AI Safety Aachen e.V. is a registered nonprofit (gemeinnütziger Verein) under German law. Grants are issued as Forschungsstipendien pursuant to §3 Nr. 44 EStG and are tax-free for recipients in Germany. They do not count toward the income thresholds relevant for statutory health insurance. Recipients are responsible for understanding the tax and insurance implications in their own jurisdiction.