European AI (Fund)

This fund aims to strengthen civil society’s ability to take on this crucial role: to be a more visible and more effective voice in public and policy debates about the role, form and shape that Europe’s digital transformation should take. The funds’s goal is to bring in new actors to the debate, especially those that are working on issues affected by AI (Artificial intelligence) and Automated Decision Making and who want to build their capacity in this domain. It was created after the European Commission voiced its ambition to forge a plan for Europe’s digital transformation, including AI over the next five years.

The fund’s long-term goal is to promote an ecosystem of European public interest and civil society organisations working on policy and technology, based on a diversity of actors and a plurality of goals that represents society as a whole. 

The fund is supported by a group of national, regional and international foundations working in Europe in particular the Bosch Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Fondation Nicolas Puech, Ford Foundation, King Baudouin Foundation, Luminate, Mozilla Foundation, Oak Foundation, Open Society Foundations and Stiftung Mercator. The foundations are dedicated to using their resources—financial and otherwise—to strengthen civil society and deepen the pool of experts across Europe who have the tools, capacity and know-how to catalogue and monitor the social and political impact of AI and data driven interventions and hold them to account. The European AI Fund is hosted by the Network of European Foundations.