Ripple's 12-week hybrid accelerator for startups building on the XRP Ledger, offering up to $200k in non-dilutive grants plus mentorship and investor access, with focus areas in DeFi, real-world assets, payments, and AI. Successor to XRPL Grants (140+ projects funded since 2021); runs multiple cohorts annually with a unified application.
Grant programs across
crypto, AI and open source.
Who funds them, what they fund and how to apply.
XRPL Grants funds projects building on the XRP Ledger. Its current unified application considers applicants for regional and thematic funds as well as accelerator programs, with active fall 2026 accelerator applications listed on the program site.
Y Combinator's core accelerator funds startups in batches with a $500k investment per company, Demo Days, and extensive post-funding support through the alumni network. Batches run continuously, with Requests for Startups signaling priority areas (heavily AI in 2026); applications are taken through the YC apply page.
Rolling grants for independent teams performing major development or other public-good work for the Zcash ecosystem. Applications receive community review before the elected grants committee makes an approval decision.
Subsidy program covering 25-100% of senior smart contract audit costs for early-stage, pre-mainnet DeFi protocols; no equity or tokens required.
Milestone-based grants with mentoring and technical resources for teams building omnichain dApps on ZetaChain, run directly by the ZetaChain team; 40+ projects funded to date, with applications accepted on a rolling basis.
ZKsync's first Community Activation RFP funded community events during Devconnect Buenos Aires. The submission window closed October 17, 2025, and two recipients received a combined 170,000 ZK.
ZKsync's second Community Activation RFP funded an eight-week ZK Stack content experiment. The submission period ended December 3, 2025 and ZKnomist was selected to receive 300,000 ZK.
ZKsync's third Community Activation RFP funded an institutional narrative experiment. The March 20, 2026 deadline has passed and Rally was selected to receive 833,000 ZK for an eight-week program.
An Optimism Delegate Mission Request for research into grant program structures, failure modes, success metrics, and recommendations for future governance funding. The completed call carried a fixed 20,000 OP grant.
0G Labs and Blockchain Builders Fund ran the 2026 Apollo accelerator for ten decentralized AI teams. Applications are closed; the ten-week program ran from April 28 through June 25, 2026, with a graduation event scheduled for July 29.
Mozilla's 2026 Fellowship program offered up to 10 fellowships across embedded and independent tracks. Nominations closed January 30, 2026; embedded fellows received a $75,000 stipend and $25,000 project budget, while independent fellows received a $100,000 stipend and $25,000 budget.
Previously offered grants up to $100,000 over 12 months for people building on the open-source Goose AI agent. The former grants URL now serves general Goose documentation and no current apply path is published. A February 2026 winner post remains on the blog.
Aave Grants DAO was Aave's grant-making arm. TokenLogic confirmed on 2026-07-15 that the program has sunset and is not accepting or reviewing applications.
A 12-month fellowship from Adobe Research for full-time PhD candidates enrolled at recognized universities in India with at least 12 months remaining in their PhD, working in AI-related fields such as computer vision, NLP, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. It awards a ₹12,00,000 stipend disbursed upfront, one year of Adobe Express Premium, Creative Cloud, and Firefly access, and optional mentorship from Adobe researchers; the 2026 recipients have been selected and applications are currently closed.
Anthropic's Claude Science program offered up to 50 biology and life-sciences projects as much as $30,000 in Claude credits, plus up to $2,000 in Modal compute for select projects. The inaugural application deadline was July 15, 2026, and submissions are now under review.
Funds AI-first projects that use artificial intelligence as the primary engine for progress in science and safety, combining grant funding with office space and compute at hubs in San Francisco and Berlin. Foresight has paused general rolling applications while it moves to focused RFPs. Until those RFPs are published it is not accepting further submissions.
DARPA and NSF developed AI Forge to fund and manage university-led research in AI interpretability, AI control, and adversarial robustness. Its initial university-capabilities request for information closed June 22, 2026 after receiving nearly 130 responses. No public funding call has opened since that RFI.
Status describes whether a program is running. Application methods are recorded separately. Read the funder’s terms before applying.