In more ways than one, fellowships help to bridge that awkward gap between learning something and actually doing something with it. They give you room to test ideas, build real projects, and work alongside people who are thinking just as seriously about the same problems.
For a lot of people in tech, that kind of space is hard to come by. You’re either stuck in tutorials or thrown straight into roles that expect you to already know what you’re doing. However, fellowships afford you the room to grow without the pressure of having everything figured out from day one.
So, for tech talent looking to kickstart and build projects that actually make an impact, we at Techloy have compiled a list of five AI fellowships currently open for applications in 2026.
1. Anthropic Fellows Program for AI safety research
Host: Anthropic
Fellowship Duration: May & July 2026 cohorts (4 months each)
Who It's For: Researchers and engineers looking to transition into empirical AI safety research, regardless of prior research experience.
Location: Ontario (Remote friendly), San Francisco, London, United Kingdom.
Eligibility: Open to all nationalities; applicants must have strong Python skills and a technical background in computer science, mathematics, or physics. Visa sponsorship is not provided. Fellowship Focus: Fellows work on empirical AI safety projects across workstreams, including scalable oversight, adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, AI control, AI security, and model welfare, with the goal of producing public outputs such as research papers.
Benefits: Weekly stipend, compute funding (up to $15,000 per month), close mentorship from Anthropic researchers, and access to shared workspaces.
Stipend: $3,850 per week.
Application Deadline: May 3, 2026.
2. Pivotal Research Fellowship 2026 (Q3)
Host: Pivotal Research (in partnership with the London Initiative for Safe AI – LISA)
Fellowship Duration: June 29 – August 28, 2026 (9 weeks, with extensions of up to 6 months available for strong projects)
Who It's For: Anyone aged 18 and above with an interest in AI safety, governance, biosecurity, or related fields — from first-year undergraduates to experienced professionals and those without university degrees.
Location: London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA), London, United Kingdom.
Eligibility: Open to all nationalities and backgrounds; applicants must be at least 18 years old. Meeting UK entry requirements is the applicant's responsibility.
Fellowship Focus: High-impact AI safety research across areas including technical safety, AI governance, evaluations, AI control, and biosecurity, typically resulting in a paper, policy brief, or equivalent output.
Benefits: Weekly 1-on-1 mentorship with expert researchers, dedicated research management support, in-person co-working space at LISA with weekday meals, housing support (£2,000 ($2,719) for non-London fellows), travel to London, and compute budget. Stipend: £6,000 – £8,000 ($8,158 - $10,877) for the 9-week programme.
Application Deadline: May 3, 2026.
3. Code for Africa AI For Good Fellowship 2026
Host: Code for Africa (CfA) / Digitalise Youth Consortium
Fellowship Duration: 4 months.
Who It's For: Technologists based in Africa with proven experience building practical AI tools who want to work directly with Human Rights Defender (HRD) organisations across the Sahel and neighbouring regions.
Location: Remote; applicants must have ties to eligible countries — Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Guinea, Benin, Togo, Cameroon, South Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia.
Eligibility: Applicants must demonstrate ties to African communities and have experience in AI modelling (NLP, computer vision, or predictive analytics), prototyping in resource-constrained settings, and co-creating solutions with communities or civil society organisations. Fluency in English, French, or Arabic is required. Familiarity with open-source tools and open-data principles is expected. A strong commitment to ethical AI, human rights, and responsible practice is essential.
Fellowship Focus: Supporting Human Rights Defender organisations to strengthen or design AI-enabled tools and workflows for civic engagement, countering disinformation, and protecting public discourse. Deliverables include multilingual research assistants, text analysis and summarisation tools, harmful narrative detection systems, research briefs, AI prototypes, and scaling plans for broader adoption across the region.
Benefits: Mentorship from CfA's TechLab, DataLab, and AI Sandbox; guidance from global AI experts, civil society organisations, and policymakers; collaboration with consortium partners including AfricTivistes, the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD), Canal France International (CFI), World Scout Bureau Africa (WOSM), and the Kofi Annan Foundation (KAF); and the opportunity to present capstone projects to local, national, continental, and global audiences.
Stipend: $500 per month for the duration of the programme.
Application Deadline: May 11, 2026.
4. Google Data Center Community AI Fellowship (2026)
Host: Watson Institute (powered by Google)
Fellowship Duration: September 1, 2026 – January 14, 2027 (16 weeks).
Who It's For: Impact-driven entrepreneurs and community leaders who are actively using or exploring AI and technology to solve pressing local challenges within Google Data Center communities.
Location: Virtual (with participants based in Google Data Center communities across the US, UK, Netherlands, Finland, and other listed regions).
Eligibility: Applicants must be aged 18 or above, located in or actively serving a designated Google Data Center community, and lead a community-based initiative or startup (nonprofit or for-profit) with demonstrated traction such as active users, a pilot programme, or early funding.
Fellowship Focus: Building leadership capacity, AI skills, and entrepreneurial growth to scale community-driven solutions; fellows also design and lead a local Basecamp community workshop to multiply impact across their community.
Benefits: Leadership and AI skills training workshops, personalised mentorship from practitioners, access to Google AI products and resources, financial tools and frameworks, pitch training, a Virtual Summit, and long-term alumni support.
Stipend: $1,000 to support Basecamp activities and community initiatives.
Application Deadline: July 12, 2026.
5. OpenAI Safety Fellowship
Host: OpenAI
Fellowship Duration: September 14, 2026 – February 5, 2027 (approximately 5 months).
Who It's For: Researchers, engineers, and practitioners from outside OpenAI, including those from computer science, cybersecurity, social sciences, privacy, and human-computer interaction, who want to work on high-impact AI safety and alignment research.
Location: Constellation workspace, Berkeley, California (preferred); remote participation is possible.
Eligibility: Open to external applicants worldwide; no strict academic credential requirement — research ability, technical judgment, and execution are prioritised over credentials. Applicants from diverse disciplines are encouraged. Letters of reference are required. Visa support is available through multiple pathways, including J-1, F-1/CPT (full-time only), and Optional Practical Training (OPT) which requires Designated School Official (DSO) approval); other visa situations may also be accommodated.
Fellowship Focus: Safety research relevant to both existing and future AI systems, with priority areas including safety evaluation, ethics, robustness, scalable mitigations, privacy-preserving safety methods, agentic oversight, and high-severity misuse domains. Fellows are expected to produce a substantial research output by the end of the programme.
Benefits: Weekly stipend, compute support (up to $15,000 per month), ongoing mentorship from OpenAI's safety and alignment teams based in San Francisco, access to a peer cohort at Constellation (Berkeley), and the opportunity to contribute to the broader AI safety research community. Mentors include Chloé Bakalar, Micah Carroll, Tomek Korbak, Karan Singhal, and others from OpenAI's safety and alignment teams.
Stipend: $3,850 per week (full-time, 40 hours/week expected).
Application Deadline: May 3, 2026.
David Adubiina
