OpenAI Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation open a $50 million AI grant call for cities

What the two foundations announced

The Rockefeller Foundation and the OpenAI Foundation have opened a $50 million global call for projects that help city governments use AI in public services. The programme, called Cities Deliver: AI Solutions for Public Services, was announced on 14 October. According to the Rockefeller Foundation's release, it will give grants of $500,000 to $2 million to nonprofit and civil society groups that work with a city government, with the goal of reaching up to 100 million city residents worldwide. Applications opened the same day and close on 29 November 2026.

The money goes to organisations working alongside cities, not to cities themselves. Each project must target one of four areas: public health, economic mobility, environmental resilience or civic engagement. Cities Deliver is run by RF Catalytic Capital, an affiliate of the Rockefeller Foundation.

“Cities are on the front lines of some of the biggest challenges facing communities,” said Anna Makanju, head of civil society and philanthropy at the OpenAI Foundation, in the foundation's announcement. Rockefeller president Rajiv Shah said the programme takes what has worked in Cali, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro “and opens it up to institutions everywhere.” The OpenAI Foundation describes itself as a nonprofit that is separate from OpenAI PBC, the company that sells ChatGPT. The same week, OpenAI and Anthropic also joined a $15 million Simons Foundation fund for checking AI maths.

Who can apply and who cannot

The open call page sets out who qualifies. The lead applicant must be a nonprofit, which can include a university lab or a fiscally sponsored organisation, or a public benefit corporation. For-profit companies qualify only in limited cases, with a charitable project and no more than an incidental benefit to their business. Existing Rockefeller grantees can apply. It is an organisational award, not an individual fellowship.

Governments may not apply directly, including city governments and offices led by elected officials. Instead, every applicant needs a city government partner that has committed to the project. The terms ask for a letter of intent from that partner at the first round and an official letter or memorandum of understanding at the second.

The terms and conditions define a city as an urban area with its own municipal government delivering core services. Regional and national governments can join as extra partners but cannot stand in for the city. Projects that operate at, or aim to scale to, a national level are not eligible for now, and anything related to voting or elections is excluded in every focus area. Each project also has to serve a charitable purpose, such as benefiting underserved, poor or distressed communities.

The frontier AI rule and the open-source condition

Every project must include what the foundations call a meaningful frontier AI component, defined in the terms as using recent generative AI models to complete complex tasks. Those capabilities have to be central to the solution, not bolted on. Projects can combine them with a city's existing tools and systems.

The call is tool-agnostic. The Rockefeller release says applicants may choose whichever AI models and products fit their needs, “with no requirement or preference to use OpenAI technology.” That matters because the OpenAI Foundation is a co-funder, and grantees could otherwise reasonably expect to be steered toward ChatGPT or OpenAI's API.

There is a condition that many software grants do not have. Applicants must be willing to openly license and publish the software, models and documentation built with grant money, under an open-source licence acceptable to RF Catalytic Capital. Exact terms and timing go into each grant agreement. The rule does not cover code or tools that existed before the grant, third-party material the grantee cannot relicense, personal or sensitive data, or anything whose release would create a demonstrable security risk for the grantee or its city partner. Neither foundation takes ownership of the outputs.

Seed and Scale grants and what money comes with them

Applicants pick one of two tracks. Seed grants, starting at $500,000, are for early ideas that are ready for a first city pilot: refining the idea with the city, building and testing a prototype, and running the pilot. Success means evidence that the solution works, that people use it, and what it would take to keep it going. Scale grants, of $1 million to $2 million, are for solutions already piloted with early results that want to grow within a city or move to another one. Success there means more people reached and a credible path to long-term funding, such as a city budget.

All grants run for 24 months. Half the money is paid at the start and half after a documented mid-term milestone. Indirect costs are capped at 15% for eligible nonprofits, and the foundations say an award does not guarantee any follow-on funding. Grantees also get a facilitated peer cohort with webinars and mentoring, occasional AI product and engineering help subject to capacity, access to both foundations' networks of city leaders and funders, and an invitation to a global or regional convening. The call page is explicit that the technical help is not bespoke support for each project.

Deadlines from October to April

The selection runs in two rounds over six months. Questions about the call can be sent until 31 October 2026, and the foundations will post revised answers on 4 November. Round 1 proposals, which include an eligibility screen and a short video, are due at 11:59 p.m. US Eastern Time on 29 November.

Applicants will hear in December whether they advance to interviews, which take place in January 2027. Those who pass will be told in February and invited to submit a Round 2 proposal by 1 March 2027. Final decisions are expected in April 2027. The terms say every date except the submission deadlines is an estimate and can change.

The city projects it builds on

Cities Deliver grows out of a 2023 meeting organised by the Rockefeller Foundation and OpenAI that brought together more than 40 civic leaders from six continents. Rockefeller then funded projects in three cities, and it plans follow-on grants for some of them.

In Cali, Colombia, a project called Dengue AI forecasts dengue outbreaks up to three weeks ahead, according to Mayor Alejandro Eder, who says it benefits more than 2.2 million residents. It is set to expand to Cartagena. In Rio de Janeiro, an AI-assisted flood alert system built with Columbia University sends warnings over WhatsApp to residents of the Acari and Jardim Maravilha neighbourhoods; Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere calls it a practical, scalable model, and the planned expansion would reach more residents and cover more kinds of extreme weather. In Cape Town, a resident engagement platform lets people reach the city in their own language, by voice or text, on a platform they already use, said Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

Those quotes come from the mayors themselves in the foundations' release. Neither foundation has published independent evaluations of the three pilots alongside the announcement, so the forecasting lead time and reach figures are the cities' own claims.

What to watch and the limits of the plan

This section is AI Lookout analysis. At $500,000 to $2 million per grant, $50 million could fund somewhere between 25 and 100 projects, a range that is our arithmetic; the foundations have not said how many grants they expect to make, or whether all $50 million goes out in this round. The release also does not say how the commitment is split between the two foundations.

The 100 million residents figure is a target, not a measured outcome, and it depends on grantees finding long-term funding once the 24 months end. The foundations themselves name the obstacles cities face: high implementation costs and uncertainty about data protection. Grants alone do not solve either. The open-source requirement could help other cities reuse what works, but it may also put off vendors that want to keep their code. AI labs are increasingly routing money through philanthropic vehicles, as Anthropic did by pledging shares to a new public benefit fund. Cities Deliver points that kind of philanthropic money squarely at local government.

For organisations thinking of applying, the practical points are simple: line up a committed city partner now, since a letter of intent is needed for Round 1; choose the Seed or Scale track honestly based on whether a pilot already exists; plan to publish the code; and send questions before 31 October. AI Lookout will update this article when the foundations publish their revised FAQs or announce grantees.