Artificial intelligence-focused investment funds are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone knows there's money to be made from AI, but to capture value, good VCs know they need to back products and not technologies. This has left a bit of a void in the space where research occurs within research institutions and large tech companies and commercialization occurs within verticalized startups -- there isn't much left for the DIY AI enthusiast. AI Grant, created by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, aims to bankroll science projects for the heck of it to give untraditional candidates a shot at solving big problems. Gross, a partner at Y Combinator, and Friedman, a founder who grew Xamarin to acquisition by Microsoft, started working on AI Grant back in April.

In April, Nat launched AIGrant.org. The idea was simple: fill out an application, get a grant for $5,000 to work on open source AI. People seemed to like it: we received nearly 500 applications from more than 50 countries. After a few weeks of screening, we selected our first 10 Fellows. Our projects range from many-body quantum system simulation to hardware-accelerated deep learning in the browser, a GAN to simulate brain activity and more.