$10m Funding Call Launched with Schmidt Sciences, Google DeepMind, and ARIA

Today, the Cooperative AI Foundation – in partnership with Schmidt Sciences, Google DeepMind and Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and supported by Google.org – is announcing a new technical research fund of up to $10m for researchers worldwide.

‍

We’re offering funding of up to $300,000 (Tier 1) and up to $1,000,000 (Tier 2) for independent or academic researchers and institutions to address the risks emerging from large-scale ecosystems of interacting AI agents, deployed by multiple actors.

‍

Applications are now open, with a submission deadline of 9 August AoE. Awardees are expected to be announced in Autumn 2026. More technical details and the application process can be found here.

‍

‍

Why This Matters

While most present-day cases involve teams of agents orchestrated by a single actor (or ‘principal’), we are beginning to see the emergence of more complex ecosystems of agents deployed by different actors across shared digital infrastructure. These multi-principal, multi-agent interactions create new opportunities for cooperation and shared benefit, but also new risks, which means focusing only on the safety and alignment of individual models is insufficient. 

‍

While some of these problems will be addressed by market forces, we expect others to fall through the gaps. This funding call aims to fill those gaps, catalysing the foundational scientific research needed to understand, evaluate, and control risks emerging from large-scale ecosystems of interacting AI agents, deployed by multiple actors.

‍

Research Areas

We welcome proposals in four priority areas, and we anticipate some opportunities for collaboration between teams addressing different areas: 

‍

• Sandboxes and testbeds: Building realistic, reproducible environments to evaluate, compare and accelerate progress across all areas of multi-agent safety. This includes virtual marketplaces, simulated ecosystems and multi-organisation workflows. 
• The science of agent networks: Understanding the safety-relevant properties of interacting agent populations, including investigating how collective capabilities emerge and scale, how networks fail or become volatile and how to detect dangerous, unexpected population-level properties. 
• Strengthening agent infrastructure: Stress-testing the protocols for identity, reputation and commitment that secure cross-platform agent interactions. 
• Oversight and control: Developing methods to monitor deployed agent populations and mitigate collective harms at scale.

‍

About the Partners

Google DeepMind is an artificial intelligence research laboratory.

‍

Schmidt Sciences is a philanthropic organisation that funds unconventional research in science and technology.

‍

The Cooperative AI Foundation is a charitable entity supporting research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI for the benefit of all.

‍

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is a UK R&D funding agency built to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone.

‍

Google.org is the charitable arm of Google. It provides funding, programmes, and technical expertise to accelerate the missions of nonprofits in specific focus areas such as scientific progress.