Reclaiming AI for people, society and planet: the European AI & Society Fund strategy 2026-2030
Artificial Intelligence should benefit everyone, not just the powerful few.
But we live in a world where the direction of AI has been captured by a small number of tech giants, set on amassing vast wealth and entrenching their power. Trapped in their narrow vision for the future, we are failing to harness the potential of AI technologies to build the fair, democratic and sustainable societies we all want to live in.
We launch this strategy into a world where the powerful are grabbing ever greater power, and where the unthinkable becomes a new headline each day. For us it is time not to despair but to speak up even louder for the world we want. The costs of political and technological hegemony are hitting home, and the urgency to build an alternative has never been greater. We must seize this moment to drive change.
The work of the European AI & Society Fund is to break the stranglehold of tech corportations and reclaim the direction of AI so that it serves people, society and planet. Our new five-year strategy sets out how we will do this. It rests on three objectives:
- Building a stronger public interest community. We will award grants to technology and social justice experts and advocates across Europe, and support them to build their collective power to redirect AI by shaping the debate, setting the policy agenda and securing accountability.
- Bringing more funding to the field. We will work to secure sustained and independent funding to enable the public interest community to flourish and scale, free from the grip of corporate ties.
- Forging a more strategic approach. We will support our networks across philanthropy and civil society to work effectively together to counter the powerful interests that dominate AI’s trajectory.
Read the European AI & Society Fund 2026-2030 Strategy.
Committed to grantmaking and fieldbuilding
The work ahead is to fight to save the best of what we have now, and to boldly build the future we want. We must retain hard-won protections to our fundamental rights and demand justice for technology driven harms, centring the needs of those most affected by the impacts of AI. And we must lay the path that leads to the societies we want to live in, where AI is an enabler not an impediment to equality, dignity and a healthy planet.
To achieve this, our grantmaking will continue to strike a balance. We will offer ongoing, flexible funding that empowers tech and social justice groups to sustain their capacity to shape AI’s trajectory. And we will award more targeted grants in areas with the greatest potential for impact, exploring opportunities to fund in some of the areas where AI’s effects are most keenly felt: climate, labour and our social fabric. As always, we will work with grantees holistically, complementing our financial support by nurturing collaboration, fostering skills and helping organisations be well managed and sustainable.
Building on the strength of our pooled fund
We are able to do this work thanks to the steadfast support of our funding partners who pool their resources through the Fund to have greater collective impact. Despite volatility and retrenchments in philanthropy, we see growing recognition of the opportunity and necessity to participate in actively contributing to a positive trajectory for AI. We will work to grow not only the amount of funding available to the field, but also the resilience of the funding landscape by widening the diversity of funders engaged in our work.
At the core of the European AI & Society Fund’s identity as a collaboration between 17 philanthropic foundations is our belief that together we are greater than the sum of our parts. That collective power is more important than ever if we are to wrest back control over our technological futures. The new strategy puts even stronger emphasis on supporting our communities to move faster and further together, using the unique insights of the Fund.
In this time of turmoil, we cannot predict what the week ahead will hold, let alone the next five years. This strategy provides the North Star that will help us stay true to the values we hold and the vision we pursue while acting swiftly and flexibly to the needs of the moment.