Mozilla Foundation Fellowship

Builders, founders, agitators

Up to $125,000, 12 months, and a global network of over 200 Fellows who have done this before you.

Mozilla Foundation will award 10 Fellowships for the 2027–2028 period. We are looking for extraordinary individuals working at the edges of human imagination, on technology that's too early, too unexpected, or too ambitious for anyone else to fund. Our Fellows are builders first, of tools and of the fields around them. But they are also defiant about who technology should serve, and rigorous about making it a reality.

If that sounds like you, come build with us. Bring the wildest, most radical version of your idea: the one that questions who gets to decide and puts control back in the hands of the people who use it. Optimizing the status quo is somebody else's job. Ours is to build the alternatives.

Where our Fellows end up

Nearly 30% of Mozilla Foundation Fellows have founded an organization, while 20% run one today. Our current cohort includes:

• Arghya Bhattacharya co-founded Adalat AI, a privacy-first AI system for India's courts. In 2026 it joined Y Combinator, the first nonprofit YC had backed in nearly five years.

• Mathys Rennela's open-source quantum tooling now sits inside the European Commission's conversation about open, sovereign quantum.

• Rudy Fraser is adding permissioned posts to the AT Protocol so that communities can run online spaces they govern themselves.

• Violeta Ayala is building Paqarina so that Indigenous communities in Bolivia can own and license the movement data that embodied AI learns from.

This year's focus areas

This cohort is for people reimagining emerging technology while its future is still being decided. Some are building what moves us forward. Others are building the safeguards that keep us human. If you’re doing either, we want to hear from you. For more information about these focus areas, please check out the full RFP.

Neurotech, biotech, and physical AI. Technology is moving off the screen and into our brains, bodies, and land, and we’re backing people who make sure the communities it touches get to own, shape, and govern it.

Hard infrastructure: compute, energy, quantum, and the extremes. The infrastructure that will define the next decade is being built in orbit, on the seabed, in data centers, and inside quantum machines, mostly behind closed doors, and we’re backing the people opening it up so communities get the data, the tools, and a vote.

Raising p(bloom). Instead of obsessing over the odds that AI goes wrong, we’re funding people who raise the odds it goes right, building AI that makes life better for far more people and breaking up the gatekeeping that hides behind the word “safety.”

Business models for a post-agentic web. The web’s old bargain of free information in exchange for our attention is collapsing under agents and paywalls, and we’re funding the people building the new deal, so creators, communities, and the open web still get paid.

Shared security and audit infrastructure for small organizations. We want to make security work like a public library rather than a pricey consultancy, giving small organizations affordable ways to test, audit, and trust the technology they depend on. Startups and emerging organizations shouldn't have to break the bank to ensure their tools and products are safe.

Sovereign AI, public infrastructure, and maintenance. Communities shouldn’t have to rent their intelligence from a distant cloud, so we’re funding AI and infrastructure people can own, run, and keep running long after the company behind it is gone.

Creative Advocacy (one Fellow). One reserved Independent Fellowship spot will go to a culture jammer, prankster, or artist-provocateur who can turn a stunt into a movement and make people rethink who technology is built for.

If your work doesn't fit any of these, apply as a Wildcard. Some of our best Fellows arrived with an idea we hadn't thought to ask for. If nobody else will fund it yet, that's usually a good sign. Come build with us.

Fellowship tracks

The Fellowship has two tracks for builders at different stages of their careers. Both share the same commitment: developing Fellows into the kind of technology leaders a better technology future needs:

Track I: Embedded Fellows

These Fellows are working on projects in collaboration with and backed by a civil society organization. Your host provides mentorship and a community to work inside. In return, you gain the experience of turning technical skill into community impact, and your host gains the expertise to advance its mission.

This year’s Host Organizations include:

• BASAibu (Indonesia)
• Fundación Kamanau (Chile)
• LAS Art Foundation (Germany)
• Quantum Village (United States)
• Slum & Rural Health Initiative (Nigeria)

Learn more about each of the Host Organizations and their focus area in the RFP.

What Mozilla provides: $100,000 USD in total, as a $75,000 stipend and a $25,000 project budget.

Track II: Independent Fellows

Independent Fellows pursue their most ambitious idea in one of the areas above. You'll turn your vision into products, working systems, and other innovations that advance better technology futures, with the freedom to choose the approach: a platform that proves an alternative model works, or tools that let other technologists build better systems.

What Mozilla provides: $125,000 USD in total, as a $100,000 stipend and a $25,000 project budget.

How to apply

Applications are reviewed through a multi-stage process. The primary review occurs at the Letter of Intent stage, with only a small number of shortlisted applicants invited to submit a full application in early 2027.

• Letter of Intent deadline: December 17, 2026 at 11:59 PM Pacific (UTC-8)

• Invitation to submit full application: February 16, 2027

• Full application deadline: March 12, 2027 at 11:59 PM Pacific (UTC-8)

• Final applicants notified: April 30, 2027

The Fellowship begins on June 1, 2027, and runs for 12 months.

Before applying, we recommend that you read the full RFP for more details about our key focus areas and host organizations.