Cosmos Grants are back!
Prototype AI for human autonomy and truth-seeking
At Cosmos, we’re dedicated to supporting work that advances human autonomy, decentralization, and truth-seeking.
We started Cosmos Grants to provide people with the opportunity to work on projects that build towards a positive vision of how AI can be used to strengthen human capacities. These projects need support as they often move too quickly or are too early-stage for traditional research funders, but may not match the commercial priorities of a for-profit lab.
Inspired by Cosmos Founding Fellow Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures, our process makes decisions quickly, with minimal administrative overhead. The program is co-led by Alex Komoroske, Zoe Weinberg, and Darren Zhu.
Initial prototypes in the program have been developed into new research agendas, new companies, adopted benchmarks, and demos for frontier AI labs.
We currently operate two tracks: one focused on human autonomy, and another on truth-seeking, which we run in partnership with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, America’s leading free speech advocacy organization.
Key details
$1k-10k+; 90-day build project
Opportunities to collaborate with our community, gain follow on funding, and get featured on our Substack
Rolling review; decision in ~4 weeks
Applications close: Sunday July 26, 2026
1. AI for Human Autonomy
Writing lets us externalize memory, while the printing press relieved us of the drudgery of copying. These technologies extended our ability to act, while preserving our capacity to form judgments. AI, however, tempts us to offload deliberation and decision making.
That faculty, autonomy, is the one most at risk, and the one most worth preserving. We fund builders who protect it.
This track funds builders and researchers whose work helps people to avoid deferring too to AI, and practice judgment and self-formation.
2. AI for Truth-Seeking
Truth is found in the open, by many people testing each other’s claims. AI can replace that contest with a single confident answer, and the disagreement that catches error begins to thin out.
We fund projects that support the open contestation of ideas and safeguard the role of human judgment in knowledge production. Alongside funding from Cosmos and FIRE, AI and truth-seeking projects receive compute credits from Prime Intellect.
Get inspiration from past grant projects
Priori surfaces the silent choices behind an AI answer (its tone, what it emphasizes, the values it assumes) and turns them into controls you can adjust, so you can contest defaults instead of trusting them. Steven has since accepted a Cosmos Fellowship and is studying Priori’s effects on autonomy with fellow grantee Cathy Fang.
MoSaIC pairs AI conversation analysis with expert human evaluation to capture the social dynamics of learning that solitary AI tutoring tends to flatten. Caitlin’s work became empirical research published at ISLS CSCL (paper) and IEEE FIE (paper), and part of her PhD at the MIT Media Lab.
Thought Refractor turns any text into several visual forms (breakdowns, comparison frames, flowcharts, concept maps) so you can see an argument’s structure from many angles instead of one. Cheng-Wei founded a startup, Wondering, built on it.
Modelling the Language Process (TLM-1) is a language model that accounts for time, predicting both a document’s contents and the year it was written, and surfacing how words shift meaning over decades. Brandon’s paper was accepted to the ACL 2026 Main Conference.
Prompt injection as role confusion showed how prompt injections are driven by a flaw in how LLMs perceive roles and identified ways to detect when a model is vulnerable. This means models rely on memorized rules instead of reasoning through social situations the way a human would. Jasmine won OpenAI’s red-teaming contest and her paper was accepted to ICML.
Campus is a project-based learning tool that adapts complex projects to your level and prompts you for input, building the capacity for self-directed growth. Kasey has since started a new company, Primitive, focused on coordinated intelligence.
FAQ
Who can apply? Anyone. We’re looking for the best proposals and talent. No credentials needed.
What type of projects do you accept? We fund both new endeavors and existing efforts, though we expect a major deliverable within 90 days. The majority of our applications are from individuals though we also accept team projects.
Where does the funding come from? Cosmos Institute is a 501c(3) non-profit that is funded by philanthropic donations. FIRE is partnering on support and funding for the truth-seeking grant round, with compute provided by Prime Intellect.
How do you select grantees? We look for individuals with talent and potential, and ideas that can be shaped into a practical demonstration or prototype that advances human autonomy or truth-seeking with AI.
What benefits are there beside funding? Cosmos Institute is building a community of technologists committed to elevating human potential through projects that expand autonomy, foster decentralization, and enable truth-seeking in the age of AI. We help grantees connect with like-minded builders and researchers through introductions, in-person meetups, and events.
Cosmos Institute is the Academy for Philosopher-Builders, technologists building AI for human flourishing. We run fellowships, fund AI prototypes, and host seminars with institutions like Oxford, Google DeepMind, and Liberty Fund.