The Cooperative AI Foundation (CAIF) is a UK-registered charity that funds and supports research to improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI systems for the benefit of humanity.
The Cooperative AI Foundation (CAIF) is a UK-registered charity that funds and supports research to improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI systems for the benefit of humanity.
People
Updated 05/18/26Cooperative AI Research Fellow
Cooperative AI Cohort Member
Board Trustee
Funding Details
Updated 05/18/26- Annual Budget
- $1,731,887
- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
- -
- Funding Raised to Date
- $15,000,000
Org Details
Updated 05/18/26The Cooperative AI Foundation (CAIF) was incorporated in England and Wales on 30 June 2021 (company number 13485176, charity number 1201294) and is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It was established with a $15 million philanthropic commitment from Macroscopic Ventures (formerly the Center for Emerging Risk Research, or CERR), which made the commitment in May 2021. CAIF's mission is to support research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI for the benefit of all. Cooperative intelligence refers to the skills and properties required for promoting cooperation between humans, AI systems, and organizations. The foundation focuses on research that is important, tractable, and neglected, and is particularly interested in differential progress — research that advances cooperative capabilities without simultaneously advancing capabilities for deception, manipulation, or coercion. The foundation's primary activity is academic grantmaking. Grants typically range from GBP 10,000 to GBP 385,000 with a median near GBP 150,000. Notable funded projects include the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL) at Carnegie Mellon University led by Vincent Conitzer, multi-agent ML research at Oxford, cooperative AI contests using the Melting Pot environment, and studies on AI coercive capabilities, cooperative negotiation, and emergent norms. In 2024, CAIF funded three proposals totaling approximately GBP 660,000. Beyond grantmaking, CAIF runs a PhD Fellowship program, an annual Cooperative AI Summer School (held in Marlow, England in July 2025 with 65+ participants), an ongoing seminar series, and workshops at major conferences including NeurIPS, IJCAI, AAAI, and AAMAS. In 2025, CAIF introduced an early-career track for postdoctoral researchers with grants up to GBP 100,000. According to official charity filings for the year ending 31 December 2024, total income was GBP 2,368,177 (primarily donations and legacies) and total expenditure was GBP 1,731,887. The organization had 6 employees. Key leadership includes Research Director Lewis Hammond and Associate Director (Research and Grants) Cecilia Elena Tilli. The Board of Trustees includes Allan Dafoe (DeepMind), Thore Graepel (Google DeepMind), Audrey Tang (Taiwan's cyber ambassador and former digital minister), Gillian Hadfield (Johns Hopkins University), and Jesse Clifton (Macroscopic Ventures).
Theory of Change
Updated 05/18/26CAIF believes that cooperation failures — between AI systems, between AI and humans, and between human actors mediated by AI — represent a major and underappreciated source of catastrophic risk from advanced AI. Multi-agent interactions can produce qualitatively different failure modes than single-agent AI safety problems. By funding academic research on cooperative AI now, while the field is nascent and neglected, CAIF aims to establish scientific foundations, evaluation methods, and practical techniques that AI developers, policymakers, and oversight bodies can draw on as systems become more powerful. The foundation emphasizes differential progress: pushing forward research on beneficial cooperative capabilities and governance mechanisms while explicitly avoiding research that advances coercive or deceptive dual-use capabilities. It also invests in community-building — fellowships, summer schools, workshops, and seminar series — to grow the pipeline of researchers working on these problems and embed cooperation science into mainstream AI development.
Grants Received– no grants recorded
Updated 05/18/26Projects
Updated 05/18/26An annual intensive summer school run by the Cooperative AI Foundation that trains students and early-career researchers in the emerging field of cooperative AI.
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