NSF-supported STRIDE Ventures launches AI Efficiency Challenge to invest up to $13 million to accelerate deployment-ready innovations to strengthen U.S. AI infrastructure

The AI Efficiency Challenge will connect innovators and large-scale operators to rapidly translate efficiency technologies into real-world AI systems.

STRIDE Ventures — a joint effort between the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP) and the Start2 Group to rapidly fund U.S. innovation — recently launched the AI Efficiency Challenge.

The challenge invites proposals that accelerate the commercial adoption of translation-ready solutions to dramatically improve the efficiency of at-scale AI/Machine Learning systems and data centers. The initiative aims to enhance capacity-building and competitiveness of U.S.-based AI companies by reducing the cost of training and inference, addressing near-term limitations on data center capacity, and accelerating the time to market of new models.

The AI Efficiency Challenge will prioritize translation-ready solutions that deliver efficiency improvements across the AI/ML pipeline. Funding will be offered at two levels: up to $3.5 million and up to $1.75 million per project. Awards will emphasize rapid team mobilization and close collaboration with deployment partners, and progress will be evaluated through a go/no-go framework directing continued resources to projects demonstrating measurable impact. Applications are due July 13, 2026.

For more information, please visit the AI Efficiency Challenge webpage and register for an upcoming webinar.

STRIDE Ventures is an initiative operated by the Start2 Group to advance innovations that reinforce U.S. technological leadership, economic security and industrial resilience. This initiative enables NSF to experiment with new models of innovation funding, connecting researchers to urgent national challenges and accelerating the path from discovery to deployment. The inaugural challenge from STRIDE Ventures — the Tech Metal Transformation Challenge — awarded funding to eight teams to create solutions that tackle the hardest technical gaps in critical materials recovery: extracting, converting and returning metals from complex domestic waste streams into high-performance materials for advanced manufacturing.

About TIP

The NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP) seeks to engage all Americans in accelerating critical and emerging technologies to advance U.S. competitiveness. The directorate partners across sectors to advance three strategies – accelerating critical and emerging technology, expanding the geography of American innovation and building a competition-ready workforce. For more information about NSF TIP, visit nsf.gov/tip/latest.