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AI Grant
USA
AI
About
AI Grant is between batches, and has been since 2024. Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross founded it and put $10M into it, but neither runs it day to day now. Hersh Desai and Lenny Bogdonoff do, and both founders joined Meta in 2025. The program pays $250K on an uncapped SAFE plus around $600K in cloud credits. Batch 4 closed to applications in August 2024 and no fifth batch has been announced. AI Grant went quiet once before, between 2017 and 2023, and came back, so this may be a pause rather than an ending.
Key People
Notable Portfolio
Perplexity AI
ElevenLabs
Character.AI
CoreWeave
Safe Superintelligence
AI Grant is not accepting new applications.
Questions about AI Grant
- Where did AI Grant run?
- AI Grant ran in the USA.
- What sector did AI Grant back?
- AI Grant backed AI.
- Which companies has AI Grant backed?
- Companies backed by AI Grant include Perplexity AI, ElevenLabs, Character.AI, CoreWeave and Safe Superintelligence.
- Is AI Grant still accepting applications?
- No. AI Grant is not accepting new applications. This page is kept as a record of the program.