Timeless Research Grants
The spirit of the grant
Technology accelerates everything. Understanding rarely keeps pace. Timeless Grants support independent researchers exploring AI-related questions that fall outside the bounds of traditional venture-backed or corporate R&D roadmaps. In a world built for speed and short-term returns, we carve out room for deep thought and slow questions. There is no equity, no product roadmap, and no commercial expectation. This is not investment. It is time, space, and trust—for people asking the questions no one else is asking yet. We fund work that sharpens understanding, not market cap.
Program details
Focus: AI-related research across disciplines
Cohorts: 2 per year
Fellows: 3 per cohort
Grant size: Up to $100,000 per fellow
Output: A public Artifact—a shareable object that others can build on
Deadline: First round applications due December 1, 2025
Who should apply
Independent researchers, Graduate students, Self-taught polymaths, Scientists between jobs, Builders with ideas that don’t fit the brief
You do not need credentials. You need curiosity, clarity, and a question worth chasing.
What we’re excited to fund
We're open to a wide variety of non-commercial, AI-related work. Below are example areas to spark ideas—not to constrain them.
Frontiers in Science
- AI trained on ecological soundscapes (birdsong, whales, forests) to detect signs of environmental distress before humans notice.
- Cross-species communication experiments using foundation models trained on animal vocalizations. Could we build the first “dictionary” for whales or elephants?
- Using LLMs to decode early signals of disease in unstructured data like voice, movement, or sleep, long before clinical markers.
Rediscovering Human Knowledge
- Building a universal timeline of invention by mining patents, newspapers, and library records.
- Reviving lost films, art, or manuscripts from fragmentary descriptions or archival traces.
- Building “future libraries”: collections of structured, timestamped predictions that become cultural artifacts in their own right.
Other Topics
- AI systems trained on thousands of hours of historic game footage to uncover lost tactics or forgotten strategies in sports.
- Studying how open-source LLMs influence political polarization
- Simulating mythical worlds — entire societies, histories, and fictions — and studying their internal logic.
- Creating “impossible puzzles” that only hybrid human-AI collaboration can solve.
What is the Output?
Every project must leave behind an artifact: a longform essay, dataset, recorded talk, visual explainer, or interactive work. Something to carry the insight forward. The artifact matters as much as the research itself—because it becomes part of our collective memory.