Approving this grant as part of our portfolio on AI safety fieldbuilding! I'm happy to see such widespread praise for Apart's work, and to see that Richard, Anton, Ryan, Soroush, and Gavin (among many others) want to fund Apart to continue with its mission.

Some reflections:

• Gavin & Anton have called out that larger funders seem not to be funding Apart. In my head, I sometimes think of Apart as part of & supporting a "shadow AI safety scene", my made-up distinction to contrast Apart and things like AISC, aisafety.world, etc from the "mainstream AI safety scene", which is more typified by OpenPhil, Constellation, MATS, and the AI labs. My sense is that the mainstream scene is top down, high-trust, densely-networked in the Bay (plus London, DC); while the shadow scene is bottoms-up, loosely confederated, remote. The mainstream scene takes a while to build up the trust to dedicate large amounts of funding to people outside of it; I suspect that's one of the key reasons for Apart's funding difficulties. Part of why I'm excited to run Manifund is to support projects outside the "mainstream" (where I/Manifold/Manifund began, and arguably still reside); I feel that Apart is in some sense kindred to Manifund, and I'm particularly glad we can be helping them here.

• I also just really like hackathons (see this), and so I'm glad that somebody else in the ecosystem is systematically pushing for more hackathons!

• My biggest uncertainty with Apart is that Esben himself is stepping back into an advisory role, to focus more on their new for-profit incubator Seldon. I'm excited for Seldon (we're hosting their first batch out of Mox!), but from an outside view, having a founder depart means that Apart now sits at a fairly critical juncture for having continued impact. As a funder, my best guess is that I'd prefer to fund Seldon over Apart (though I recognize that these cater to different audiences and funders will have different preferences.)

• My unsolicited advice is that Apart should try to expand their revenue base beyond soliciting donations, to encourage discipline, financial resilience, and incentive alignment. For example, Apart seems to do well at placing great candidates into new jobs, and a natural thing to do would be to ask employers recruiter's fees to fund Apart's continued operations. "Alumni donations" would be another angle on this, similar to how universities raise from those they've taught.

(see my comment further below)

I upvoted because Apart Research offered me help in my research which we successfully finished and were accepted at three workshops with. Apart Research gave me invaluable support and help through out the process. I hope Apart Research continues

I don't think anything has helped my career in AI Safety more than Apart; if it weren't for their hackathons (I participated in the 'Women in AI Safety' one), my contribution to the community might have remained passive for a long time. Their hackathon is what spurred action for me; the resources and help they provided were instrumental for the creation of the resource that I eventually managed after the hackathon. Apart has continued to incubate support for my work in AI safety by accepting me into their Studio program, where they have provided me with ample feedback and connected me to many skilled researchers and teams working on similar projects. I'm eternally grateful to Apart, and it receives my highest recommendation- they are the very definition of philanthropy. If you're reading this, you should seriously consider donating to this wonderfully altruistic organisation.

Apart has been working for many years on building a strong, meritocratic pipeline of AIS talent, drawing from some of the most untapped pools of talent globally. The quality and pace of their work is incredibly impressive. I'm donating to their cause and hope others who care about AIS do so as well -- it would be a massive shame for an org of their impact and value not to continue on.

Apart incubates curiosity into impact. As an embedded software engineer with a minimal ML background, targeted learning and feedback opportunities were essential to building a working understanding of LLMs -- Apart's Hackathons are this platform. I went from writing Linux drivers to co-authoring a mechanistic interpretability paper that landed at ICLR '25 Building Trust Workshop in 8 months. Apart introduced me to the teammates that made that possible, provided the compute resources (and additional resources for follow-up research through Lambda), and funded the conference visit. They don't just talk about bridging technical talent into AI safety -- they actually do it.

Apart's talent pipeline is very differentiated from other offerings in the AI Safety ecosystem and seems to have already produced real outcomes.

I believe Apart’s individualized fellowships are particularly valuable in a world increasingly dominated by generic, MATS-like alternatives.

Aparts hackathons and other community building seems pretty great, and often produce actually useful work

Building a culture of hands-on experimentation is probably the best way to do AI safety outreach, and Apart seems to have executed on it really well.

I like Apart; I like their results.

The top-of-funnel reference class they're in includes Bluedot, Nontrivial, AISC, aisafety.info. Three of those groups also struggle for institutional funding. Two of those groups are also trying to put out real research as legible output. (MATS isn't top-of-funnel in this sense.)

What do we want from this kind of effort?

1. leaders who know what they're talking about technically (check)

2. friendly (check)

3. otherwise good vibes and epistemics (check)

4. actually doing stuff; empirical; e.g. seeking (proxy) feedback for ideas from conference reviews (check)

5. throughput (check)

6. buy-in from ML or safety or governance or whatnot (mixed?)

I find it difficult to estimate the value of openness and friendliness in field-building but it's not small, and this is not their only selling point. Good luck!

Strongly endorse this!

It's been great collaborating with the Apart team on top-of-the-funnel fieldbuilding!

Apart has a good way to make many different kinds of bets and test ideas relatively cheaply (something I think they should lean into more!). I'd overall like for their work to continue.

Apart research publishes multiple papers in AI safety. I don't like the entrepreneurial vibe but they have results.

With such an amazing track record and support previous from big funders, I wonder why they (big funders) are letting you run out of money. Did they all refuse additional support?

Apart has been useful for me to quickly experiment with ideas/improve on quick iteration. I've organised multiple hackathons before knowing apart, and their format is vastly more effective at converting talent/by unit of effort. While I was head of EffiSciences’ AI Safety Unit, this was one of my favorite event formats, and this is one of the format that I encourage alumni of ML4Good to run. Empirically, each apart hackathon that I organized in Paris enabled the long term careers of 0.6 person in AI Safety (see the table). This means that, on average, 0.6 new full-time persons started working on AI safety after each Apart hackathon event in Paris.

During an Apart Research hackathon I got my first hands-on experience with mechanistic interpretability and fell in love with it. Now I'm working on mechinterp full-time and have published mechinterp papers at ICLR and ICML. Generally their hackathons are very accessible, well-organized, and a great entry-point for people interested in AI safety.

I believe this is a great funding opportunity for any funders interested in getting more people into working on AI safety!

I've been impressed with Apart Research for a while now, and I think more funders should consider filling their funding gap. Their Apart Sprints are a great global on-ramp for many people into AI safety research, and some of our fellows at WhiteBox Research have participated in them. I also got to listen to both of their ICLR orals in-person, which were insightful.

I think Apart Research's hackathons are a great place for community and skill building. I want your work to continue.

AI Safety is suffering from Elitism, induced by scarce financial resources that then also have to be used to accommodate high-paying jobs to make carreer switches more attractive. Even though the interest in AI Safety has grown tremendously, these dynamics are still in place and almost no one offers low entry points for early career individuals (e.g. students in undergraduate studies).

Apart is the only organization I know that goes against this elitist trend by offering support and guidance to virtually anyone who is seriously interested in AI Safety research, no matter their previous qualifications. The (AI Safety) world needs more research and field-building organizations like Apart, as otherwise the field of AI Safety will not manage to develop fast enough to solve fundamental issues before it's too late.

Apart had a tremendous impact on the development of my research skills and interests, and I am grateful for their existence. This organization cannot cease to exist, as it would be detrimental to the AI Safety landscape.

I participated Apart's security evaluations hackathon with a friend last May, and it helped me get in the foot in the door and start exploring the AI safety technical research space. I believe that Apart's hackathons and other programs are a critical part of the talent pipeline for the AI safety community and it would be a shame if they had to shut down due to lack of funding.

Apart research offers an accessible entry point to AI safety research and it would be a tremendous loss if it didn't exist anymore - I don't believe there's another organization that does what they do!

I first got into mech interp by going to an Apart Hackathon. I have enjoyed every Apart Hackathon that I've participated in and found them to be extremely productive.

Apart Research forms a critical entry point to contributing meaningfully to research into the powerful technologies poised to shape our future. It is absolutely essential that we expand participation in AI ethics and safety research beyond the institutions that have the most money and power. As a widely recognized and growingly accessible nonprofit, Apart is uniquely positioned to elevate global, diverse, and underrepresented voices in this critical conversation. I'm personally thankful for Apart as an early career researcher without a graduate degree who is now equipped to contribute to the research community; something I previously thought was out of reach.

Apart has been instrumental in my early career as an AI researcher. Its hackathons and Lab program significantly boosted my research skills and confidence, culminating in my first publication at a workshop of a top-tier conference. This pivotal achievement, in particular, has profoundly shaped my future aspirations and motivated me to aim much higher. Beyond the technical growth, I greatly valued engaging with like-minded individuals and becoming aware of the broader AI safety community and opportunities. Moreover, Apart's highly accommodating programs provided essential flexibility, a key factor that makes participation feasible for many members. I am very optimistic about the organization and wholeheartedly believe in its continued ability to produce world-class, socially impactful research.

Apart Research has immensely helped me in my AI Safety/Alignment journey. Coming from industry, knowing about AI development and not necessarily the consequences of it has been enlightening. Through Apart, I have been able to gain a deeper understanding of AI Safety through their Hackathon, Studio and Fellowship. Not only am I able to connect with others in the lab through shared mission, but also help make an impact through rigorous research. The lab has helped develop my research skills so that I can contribute to issues that have huge need to be explored yet not many people working on it. Apart Research helps build up the talent needed so that AI Safety labs can continue to ensure safe AI. If Apart Research shuts down, this would be a huge loss not just to the research field, but society.

Love the hackathons and the Apart community! They were very useful when I first started safety research.

Apart makes a huge impact by providing early career aspiring AI Safety researchers the opportunity to do a research project on a weekend, and have something to show for to get accepted on research internships

Apart Research is the most accessible AI Safety research group I have encountered. Their pipeline of hackathons -> studio -> lab fellow is unique, and given the number of successful papers that come out of the lab, the pipeline works. Apart also acts as a catalyst for people that want to career-switch into AI Safety, and the mentorship I have received from them has been the most impactful and valuable contribution to my personal journey.

Balancing accessibility with ops can be incredibly tricky, but Apart have a proven track record of being able to balance it. Every member is dedicated to producing -exceptional- research, whilst bringing people up to speed with the latest developments and unbiased viewpoints. This alone is priceless, but without funding, they will not be able to continue fostering such an amazing community, and that would be a massive loss to the AI Safety field.

Apart Research is an exceptional, vital, and impactful community to say the least. Without it, I would not have been able to connect with such a transformative, inclusive, and unique network now. Having experienced and or evaluated many other formats, I believe that their model is the most effective and efficient.

The experiences I gained have been very helpful for my career overall - instrumental in terms of focusing more on AI Safety. To name just one example of the many different ways in which it has been extremely valuable, leading to inbound opportunities with multinationals, national firms, plus a leading local education institution.

I 100% feel this is one of the best things I have ever been a part of, where so much talent abounds from fellow participants, mentors, speakers and so on. As for the great minds behind the scenes powering things, I have had the privilege of collaborating with many incredible teams over the past decade: they truly stand out as among the best of the best.

Also, I know how meaningful it is to other people, including those who tell me they have yet to take part in a research sprint but aspire to do so. Not being able to continue this essential work would be a huge loss, not to mention at such a crucial time for the field.

What I have written above in yet another failed attempt to summarise (should have gotten an LLM involved but didn't think of it until now) does not do Apart justice; I would be happy to expand anytime.

Apart is a great community to get up to speed in AI safety

Apart Sprints were useful in bootstrapping my AI Safety Career. The hackathons reports were my first publications. They also gave me concrete experience thinking about LLMs and AI strategy.