Who’s behind this?
Europe has the talent, the research heritage, and the values to lead in AI. What has been missing is the infrastructure to turn those strengths into frontier breakthroughs.
Next Frontier AI changes that.
A pan-European initiative run by SPRIND
Launched by Germany, France, and the European Commission at the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in November 2025, this initiative brings together governments, institutions, and partners to create the conditions for radical innovation. It's not about competing with individual nations or organisations, it's about building what none of us could achieve alone.
As the best-funded non-profit Frontier AI initiative in the world, backed by a high-level group of advisors, our mission is clear: to establish Europe as the birthplace of the next generation of AI.
- Non-dilutive challenge funding
- €125M
- Perspective in follow-on investment
- €1B
- Frontier AI, built in Europe
- 3 Labs
SPRIND is the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation. Think of us as a state-backed deep-tech fund and company builder: we deploy public money with a venture mindset, take real technical risk, and are explicitly mandated to try things that can fail. For Next Frontier AI, SPRIND coordinates a wider European coalition of state actors, industry partners, compute providers, investors, and a heavyweight jury of AI builders. We're here to back wildly ambitious projects that are too bold for conventional funding.
An initiative by
Our advocates:
Want to know more, or team up?
Whether you’re curious about partnership opportunities, our structure or how decisions get made, get in touch.
Exact rules will be explained in the application process, but you should assume:
- you'll need a European legal entity (UG, GmbH, SAS, Oy, S.r.l., etc.) by the time funding flows,
- and the lab must be effectively headquartered in Europe.
We'll provide templates and support for cap tables, governance, and contracts, so a lack of prior startup experience is not a blocker.
Our Timeline
- Application period opens
- Application deadline
- Proposal screening and pitch
- Up to 10 teams are funded
- Up to 3 winners are announced and backed to raise up to €1B
Anyone with ambition, technical expertise, and the drive to build something genuinely new can apply – whether you're an individual, a duo with a shared vision, or an established team ready to scale. You don't need a polished pitch or a complete team from day one.
Don't have a team yet?
We'll help you find co-founders and partners through active matchmaking events that connect complementary technical, strategic and operational skills. Visit our on-site roadshows in several European cities, or join virtual meet-ups from February to April 2026.
What kind of teams?
The ideal team has multi-disciplinary teams with serious tech skills:
- Deep technical backbone: You should have people who have actually trained serious models, run infra, shipped systems, or done adjacent hard things (robotics, large-scale scientific computing, STEM, etc.).
- Builder mindset: This is for people who are willing to build a company or lab, not just publish a paper. Product sense, ops, and some tolerance for chaos are a plus.
- Diverse skills, like:
- research (ML, optimisation, theory),
- engineering (systems, MLOps, infra, security),
- data (pipelines, curation, governance), and from Stage 3 of the challenge, at least one person who cares about business/users/customers/GTM.
Team size & composition over time
- At application: a committed core (usually 3–7 people) with a clear technical thesis and early roadmap.
- During the challenge: scaling into a multi-disciplinary lab. Think: a few dozen people over time – researchers, engineers, MLOps, data, product, ops. Exact numbers are up to you; we care about functionality, not org charts.
- If in doubt: if you can credibly argue "we can build and run a frontier-grade system given enough budget and time", you're in the right ballpark.
Yes. That's a core design feature, not an afterthought.
Next Frontier AI and our partners provide company-building support:
- templates for legal structures, equity, IP,
- help with hiring, HR and finance basics,
- governance, boards, non-executive advisors,
- GTM coaching and commercial strategy support,
- safety & compliance playbooks,
- support in recruiting MLOps, security, data, product, etc.
We don't expect every PI or staff engineer to suddenly become a perfect CEO. We care that the lab becomes investable and operationally excellent; we'll help you get there.