AI2050 is a flagship program of Schmidt Sciences, co-chaired by Eric Schmidt and James Manyika, backed by a $125 million, five-year commitment from Eric and Wendy Schmidt. The initiative supports early-career and senior researchers globally through competitive fellowships, targeting ten categories of hard problems in AI spanning capabilities, safety, alignment, governance, geopolitics, economics, access, and societal adaptation. Fellows receive multi-year funding and access to a peer community, and supported research is published openly for broad societal benefit. As of late 2025, the program has funded 99 fellows across 8 countries and 42 institutions across four cohorts.
Funding Details
- Annual Budget
- $25,000,000
- Monthly Burn Rate
- -
- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
- -
- Funding Raised to Date
- $125,000,000
- Fiscal Sponsor
- -
Theory of Change
AI2050 operates on the theory that identifying the right hard problems in AI and funding exceptional researchers to solve them is the most direct path to ensuring AI is beneficial by 2050. By investing in a global, interdisciplinary community of leading researchers at early and senior career stages, providing them with multi-year unrestricted support, and building connections among them, the initiative aims to accelerate progress on the technical, governance, and societal challenges that most threaten beneficial AI outcomes. Supporting open publication ensures that findings benefit the entire field rather than a single institution. The program explicitly addresses both capability advancement and safety/alignment challenges as complementary rather than competing concerns.
Grants Received
No grants recorded.
Projects
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People
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Details
- Last Updated
- Apr 2, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC
- Created
- Mar 19, 2026, 10:31 PM UTC