Pathfinder Fellowship

The Pathfinder Fellowship is a program of Kairos, a US-based AI safety fieldbuilding nonprofit founded in October 2024 and headquartered in San Francisco. Kairos was created to serve as the institutional home for AI safety talent development programs previously scattered across other organizations, including the Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR) and the Fieldbuilder Support Program (FSP). Pathfinder was launched in July 2025 and consolidates two prior programs: Open Philanthropy's University Organizer Fellowship and Kairos's own Fieldbuilder Support Program. It provides three main types of support to university group organizers: funding (starting with $500 in startup funds, then budget-based grants; graduate student organizers may also receive stipends), mentorship (matched with experienced organizers from organizations such as METR, RAND TASP, MATS, Redwood Research, and the US AISI), and community resources (workshops, a Slack community, coffee chats, and access to the AI Safety Groups Resource Center). Groups without a legal entity receive spending-capped cards via fiscal sponsorship through the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI). Pathfinder also runs a Support Grants program for experienced organizers who no longer need mentorship. By Fall 2025, Pathfinder had grown to 65 fellows across 51 universities in 11 countries. Kairos as a whole had supported 120 or more organizers and helped incubate 40 or more AI safety groups. The program is led by Co-Directors Agustín Covarrubias and Neav Topaz, with Rebecca Baron serving as Founding Generalist. Kairos describes itself as operating with urgency and maintaining a lean team, and is financially supported by Open Philanthropy and Coefficient Giving.

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