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Mercor AI Safety Fund Grants

mercorSan FranciscoResearch
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Salary
$0
Job type
Temporary
Posted
15 Sept 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Mercor AI Safety Fund Grants is a temporary research funding opportunity located in San Francisco for researchers focusing on frontier artificial intelligence safety. This initiative suits academics, non-profit investigators, public benefit corporation staff, and small startup members wishing to secure financial backing for specific safety proposals.

Role Overview

The Mercor AI Safety Fund Grants program provides financial support totaling $5 million for safety research, evaluations, and verification projects. The initiative helps address challenges regarding whether frontier artificial intelligence is safe enough to deploy. Award sizes and resource mixes depend on the specific project submitted in the proposal.

Key Responsibilities

Conduct safety research focused on specific, well-scoped questions regarding artificial intelligence systems.
Publish project outputs under an open license permitting commercial use, such as a paper, open dataset, public methodology, or tool.
Submit periodic progress reports to the funding organization.
Complete necessary tax documentation and sanctions screening requirements.

Requirements

Background in machine learning, computer science, statistics, measurement, psychometrics, human-computer interaction, security, or social science.
Affiliation with a university, non-profit research organization, public benefit corporation, or small startup that does not sell artificial intelligence training data.
Location in the United States or the United Kingdom.
Submission of an Expression of Interest consisting of a one- or two-page document detailing team background, research accomplishments, proposed project, and resource requirements.

Nice to Have

Experience with agentic evaluation, reinforcement learning environments, adversarial machine learning, or systems security.

Skills and Tools

Machine learning
Computer science
Statistics
Measurement and psychometrics
Human-computer interaction (HCI)
Security
Social science

Salary and Benefits

Grant funding covering researcher hours, application programming interface costs, stipends for event and conference attendance, and the time of experts from the platform.
Access to the organization's expert network for human grading, red-teaming, and annotation, including professionals such as lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists, and clinicians.
Access to internal evaluation infrastructure, subject to review.
Introductions to a network of researchers across frontier laboratories and academia.

About the Company

Mercor is a profitable Series C artificial intelligence data company valued at $10 billion with a mission to organize human intelligence to power the artificial intelligence economy. The company builds the layer between human expertise and frontier models, operating offices in San Francisco, New York City, and London where teams work in-person five days a week.

How to Apply

Apply on the official company careers page by submitting an Expression of Interest.

Questions candidates ask

What is the total funding amount available through this grant?

Mercor is committing $5 million to fund safety research through these grants.

Who is eligible to apply for the safety grants?

Researchers at universities, non-profit research organizations, public benefit corporations, and small startups that do not sell artificial intelligence training data and are based in the United States or the United Kingdom are eligible.

What specific research topics are of interest?

The fund is open to proposals across safety interests, with a particular interest in misalignment, sandbox escape, evaluation awareness, interpretability, oversight and control, and red-teaming methodology.

What are the requirements for the application document?

Applicants must submit a one- or two-page Expression of Interest containing a section on the team, background, and research accomplishments; a section on the proposed research project; and a section on project outputs and impact with timelines and resource requirements.

Do grantees retain ownership of their research work?

Yes, grantees keep ownership of their work and grant Mercor a non-exclusive license to use it commercially.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official mercor careers page.

Apply on company site