Swiss AI Initiative – 2nd Call for Large Grants

The Swiss AI Initiative aims to build capacities for trustworthy large-scale AI systems, leveraging Switzerland’s top AI research institutions, a world-class GPU supercomputing infrastructure, and a commitment to open science.

The initiative focuses on developing foundation models and advancing responsible, efficient, and socially aligned AI technologies with significant impact for the Swiss and global community.
Through targeted funding, the Swiss AI Initiative enables cutting-edge research and the development of open science outputs in key areas of foundation model development, as well as high-impact application domains addressing critical societal challenges.

To accelerate progress the Swiss AI Initiative offers significant project funding and access to GPU compute resources through large project grants.

The second call for proposals is now open.

Who can apply:
 

• Applicants that are eligible to apply for funding must have an affiliation with an ETH Domain institution (EPFL, ETHZ, PSI, WSL, Empa, Eawag) and be employed in a permanent or Professor tenure-track capacity.
• Cross-institutional collaborations are strongly encouraged: computational resources can be accessed by co-applicants from the ETH Domain institutions and from other academic institutions (in Switzerland and abroad).
• Proposals may include additional partners (not requesting nor accessing any resources), such as administrations, NGOs, SMEs, or Startups.

• Access to the CSCS Alps supercomputing infrastructure. (The compute amount requested can exceed 500k computer hours, though smaller amounts are also possible.)
• Funding for personnel and research costs (CHF 2M total available, max CHF 1M per project)
• Dedicated engineering support from the Swiss AI Initiative team (48 FTE-months total across all projects).

• Large project grants are allocated for a period of one year.