Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence has announced a call for proposals for its 2026 Seed Grant program, targeting early-stage, high-risk research in human-centered artificial intelligence and data science. The initiative will fund approximately twenty-five projects, awarding up to seventy-five thousand dollars per grant for a twelve-month period. Following an eight percent institutional infrastructure fee, recipients will have sixty-nine thousand four hundred forty-four dollars available for direct research expenditures, covering personnel salaries, participant compensation, prototyping, and fieldwork. Submissions must align with HAI’s core mission of ensuring AI technologies augment human capabilities, advance novel intelligence paradigms, and serve the broader societal good. Priority research domains include AI-driven scientific discovery, educational innovation, the socioeconomic and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence, and the emerging spiritual dimensions of human-AI interaction. The institute explicitly encourages cross-disciplinary collaborations that bridge humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, biomedical fields, and engineering. The grant program prioritizes proposals that demonstrate the potential to generate preliminary findings capable of attracting subsequent internal or external funding. Projects will undergo dual evaluation through scientific and ethics-and-society review panels. Successful applicants will be notified in November and will be required to maintain active participation in HAI’s academic ecosystem, including seminars and workshop activities. All recipients must submit a comprehensive final report within thirty days of project completion, detailing outcomes, publications, and future research trajectories. Applicants may submit proposals of up to three pages, excluding references, formatted as a single-spaced PDF with eleven-point font and one-inch margins. The submission portal is open, with a firm deadline of August 18, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. While the funds support faculty, graduate students, and research staff, expenditures are restricted from covering general administrative overhead, external contractors, or subawards without prior written approval. General inquiries regarding the grant program should be directed to [email protected], while questions pertaining to the ethics and society review statement should be addressed to Betsy Rajala at [email protected]. The initiative reflects Stanford HAI’s ongoing commitment to cultivating interdisciplinary research that positions human values and practical utility at the forefront of artificial intelligence development.