The Alignment Project, launched in July 2025 with an initial £15 million from a coalition that includes the Canadian AI Safety Institute, CIFAR, Schmidt Sciences, Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Halcyon Futures, the Safe AI Fund, UK Research and Innovation, and the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, has now announced its first cohort of 60 grant awardees. The new round added £12 million in funding, bringing total support for alignment research to £27 million, including £5.6 million from OpenAI. The expanded coalition now also includes Microsoft, the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources’ AI Safety Institute, the AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund, Sympatico Ventures, and Renaissance Philanthropy. The funding will support people, time, compute and collaboration needed to stress‑test ideas at scale. Interest in the first round was extraordinary, with over 800 applications from 466 institutions across 42 countries. After a rigorous review process, 101 proposals were shortlisted for full applications, which were then assessed in depth by expert reviewers and a moderation board. The 60 successful projects cover fields such as mathematics, learning theory, economics, cognitive science and more, reflecting the project’s belief that alignment progress requires a multidisciplinary effort. Examples include LawZero’s Scientist AI, which uses a contextualization system and a prover‑verifier setup to improve reliability and transparency; a project by economists Dirk Bergemann and Stephen Morris that applies mechanism and information design to balance capability and safety; and a Stanford team led by Eva Silverstein and Surya Ganguli that develops Energy Conserving Descent, an optimisation method designed to make training outcomes more predictable and steerable. The Alignment Project’s first round demonstrates the potential for sustained, coordinated investment to accelerate progress in AI alignment, and it will open applications for the next round this summer. For updates, stakeholders are encouraged to visit the Alignment Project website.
Funding 60 projects to advance AI alignment research
The Alignment Project has awarded 60 grants totaling £27 million to advance AI alignment research, adding £12 million in new funding to its original £15 million. The coalition now includes OpenAI, Microsoft, and several international partners, and the first round received over 800 applications from 466 institutions in 42 countries.
Why it matters
By providing substantial, multidisciplinary funding, the Alignment Project aims to reduce barriers to research that could make powerful AI systems safer and more controllable, a critical concern for the industry’s future.