People
Updated 05/18/26Founder
Director of Research
Research Fellow
Apart Research Fellow
Apart Research Fellow
Funding Details
Updated 05/18/26- Annual Budget
- $954,800
- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
- $954,800
- Funding Raised to Date
- -
Org Details
Updated 05/18/26Apart Research is an independent, remote-first AI safety research organization founded in 2022 by Esben Kran. Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, the organization operates globally with research sprint locations spanning more than 50 cities worldwide. The organization's core mission is to convert experienced technical talent into published AI safety researchers ready to contribute to impactful organizations. It achieves this through a three-tiered research development pipeline. The first tier consists of weekend research sprints (hackathons), which are 48-hour events that let experienced technical professionals from anywhere demonstrate capability without disrupting their careers. The second tier is Apart Studio, a 4-6 week structured research development program introduced in December 2024. The third tier is the Apart Fellowship, a 4-6 month intensive research support program that guides researchers through to peer-reviewed publication. As of late 2025, Apart has engaged over 5,000 participants across 45+ hackathons, received 485 research report submissions, supported 45 Studio participants and 105 fellows, and produced 22 peer-reviewed publications at top venues including ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, and ACL. The organization received an ICLR 2025 Oral Award (top 1.8% of accepted papers) for DarkBench, a benchmark for detecting dark design patterns in large language models. Apart's research has been cited and used by organizations including Anthropic, the UK AI Safety Institute, and the EU AI Office. Apart Research collaborates with partners across leading AI organizations such as OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, METR, Redwood Research, and the UK AI Safety Institute. The organization has helped place 30 researchers at 20+ organizations in AI safety roles. The organization is led by co-founders Esben Kran (CEO) and Jason Hoelscher-Obermaier (Director of Research). Hoelscher-Obermaier brings nine years of AI research engineering and startup experience along with a PhD in experimental quantum physics. The organization operates under the fiscal sponsorship of Ashgro Inc, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, making donations tax-deductible in the United States. In 2024, Apart tripled the size of its core team and raised $700,000 in funding. In mid-2025, the organization ran an intensive fundraising campaign seeking $954,800 for 12 months of operations, raising $619,921. The organization continues to be highly active in early 2026, running hackathons on AI manipulation, technical AI governance, and AI control in partnership with Redwood Research and the UK AISI.
Theory of Change
Updated 05/18/26Apart Research believes that the primary bottleneck in AI safety is not a lack of problems to solve but a lack of talented researchers working on them. Their theory of change centers on building a scalable pipeline that identifies, trains, and places technical talent into AI safety careers. By running low-barrier-to-entry weekend hackathons globally, they cast a wide net to discover researchers with aptitude and motivation. Those who demonstrate fit progress through increasingly intensive programs (Studio, then Fellowship) that provide mentorship, infrastructure, and support to produce peer-reviewed research. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: published research contributes directly to the field's knowledge base, while researchers who complete the pipeline go on to join AI safety organizations, expanding the field's capacity. The remote-first, distributed model allows them to reach talent globally rather than only in traditional AI hubs, and the decreasing marginal costs of their infrastructure allow them to scale impact efficiently.
Grants Received
Updated 05/18/26Projects
Updated 05/18/26
AI Safety Ideas is a collaborative, open-access platform for sharing and discovering AI safety research project ideas, built and maintained by Apart Research.
Apart Sprints is the research hackathon program of Apart Research, running weekend-long AI safety research events with thousands of global participants. Teams work on frontier AI safety questions and produce open-source research, evaluations, and prototypes.
A weekly newsletter, podcast, and YouTube series by Apart Research covering the latest research in machine learning and AI safety. The series was later discontinued as Apart Research reprioritized its activities.
Discussion
Key risk: The main risk is that a hackathon-driven discovery model optimizes for speed and publishability rather than deep alignment progress, creating low counterfactual impact or duplication with programs like MATS and risking quality dilution as a small team scales mentorship and research standards.
Case for funding: Fund Apart Research because their globally distributed hackathon-to-fellowship pipeline has already converted experienced engineers into safety researchers, yielding 22 peer-reviewed papers (including an ICLR Oral for DarkBench) and 30 placements across top labs and AISI, making it a cost-effective way to rapidly scale technical AI safety capacity beyond traditional hubs.