Apply · são Fund programs
The Independent
Researcher Grant.
Non-equity, non-dilutive grants for individual researchers and small teams working on frontier AI, robotics, and perception — anywhere in the world. We run a single, simple program. Applications are open year-round.
Status — accepting applications
The Independent Researcher Grant is são Fund’s primary patronage instrument. We use it to back single researchers, pairs, and very small teams whose work is too early, too odd, or too unprofitable to fit anywhere else.
We treat the grant as a commission, not an investment. We do not take equity. We do not impose milestones. We do not own your work, your ideas, or your reputation. In return, we ask only that the work be done seriously and that what is shipped — code, papers, demos — be released openly when possible.
We have flexibility above and below the published award range for cases that warrant it. If a grant of $1,500 is what gets the work unstuck, that is what we will write the check for.
Scope
What we fund.
We have biases, not rules. The list below describes the work we gravitate toward; we do read everything else.
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Agents & tool use
Function-calling agents, orchestration, long-horizon reasoning, tool-using assistants for real workflows.
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Robotics & perception
Robot learning, perception stacks, real-time inference, the unglamorous infrastructure that decides what runs on hardware.
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Evaluation & methodology
Benchmarks, evaluation protocols, datasets, and tools for making model capabilities legible.
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Local & sovereign AI
On-device inference, private retrieval, models that respect the boundary between a person and the cloud.
Eligibility
Who can apply.
Individual researchers, engineers, and small teams (up to three people) — based anywhere in the world. You do not need a PhD, an affiliation, or a co-author. You may already be a student, a postdoc, an employee elsewhere, or working full-time on this.
We have a soft preference for work that one person, or a team of two to three, can hold in their heads. We have a slight bias against very large groups and a slight bias toward people who have already shipped something, however small.
Anti-scope
What we don’t fund.
Pre-seed rounds in disguise. We do not take equity or convertible notes, and we are not the right first check for a venture-bound company.
Open-ended runway. Grants are funded against a specific piece of work over a defined window, not against general living expenses or an indefinite research direction.
Replications of frontier-lab work at lab scale. We are unlikely to be the right home for compute-bound projects that need millions of GPU-hours.
Process
How it works.
One message. No form. No deck. No pitch meeting unless we both want one.
- 01
Send one email.
Write to info@saofund.ai with the subject line beginning “Independent Researcher Grant”. Include the four items listed under What to send below.
- 02
We reply within a week.
Either with questions, with a decline, or with a note that the application is moving forward to a final read.
- 03
Decision within ~3 weeks.
On accept, we send a one-page letter describing the award amount, the scope, and the affiliation rights for the duration of the grant.
- 04
Funds in two weeks.
Disbursement by wire or check (USD), or by appropriate equivalent for international grantees. We can split into tranches on request.
What to send
In one message.
Please include, in any order:
- Who you are. One paragraph; links beat prose.
- What you want to work on, and why now. One to three paragraphs.
- What an award of $X over N months would let you do that you cannot do otherwise.
- Links to anything you have already made — code, papers, demos, sketches, drafts. Rough work is welcome.
We answer every serious message. If you do not hear back in two weeks, please write again — we may have missed it.
Terms
Plain conditions.
Non-equity, non-dilutive, non-recoverable. são Fund grants are not investments. We take no equity, no convertible note, no IP. The work, the patents, the papers, the code — all of it belongs to you.
No milestones, no oversight. We trust grantees to do the work they proposed. We will not ask for quarterly reports, status updates, or check-ins. One short end-of-grant note is all we require.
Affiliation rights are scoped. Active grantees may list são Fund as an affiliation on work substantially conducted under the grant. See our affiliation policy for the specific rule and accepted formats.
são Fund · Independent Researcher Grant · effective 2024