OpenAI Foundation and Rockefeller commit $50m to AI projects for city services

Grants of $500,000 to $2 million will support city partnerships, including projects connecting residents to skills, training and employment

Cities Deliver will fund organizations working with city governments on AI projects across four public-service priorities. Photo: Rockefeller Foundation.

Organizations helping city residents find work, access training or navigate public services can apply for funding through a new $50 million initiative from the OpenAI Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Cities Deliver: AI Solutions for Public Services opened applications on October 14, with grants available over 24 months for projects developed alongside city governments. The global program aims to support organizations that collectively reach up to 100 million residents.

Economic mobility is one of four funding priorities. It covers projects connecting unemployed and underemployed residents to income, skills and benefits, including career navigation, skills-based hiring and training aligned with employers’ needs.

The call also covers public health, environmental resilience and civic engagement. Applicants can propose tools for services ranging from disease surveillance and disability support to emergency response and digital access. Projects related to voting or elections are excluded.

City partners required, OpenAI products optional

The funding comes with a distinction between who benefits and who can apply. City governments cannot submit applications directly. An eligible organization must lead each project, work with a committed city government partner and deliver a charitable purpose.

The OpenAI Foundation’s guidance lists nonprofits, public benefit corporations and select for-profit organizations among eligible applicants. Teams must demonstrate knowledge of the communities they intend to serve, the ability to deploy technology in government settings, and plans for evaluation, privacy, security and long-term sustainability.

Each solution must include a meaningful frontier AI component, using recent models to complete complex tasks. However, applicants can choose the models and products that suit their work, with no requirement or preference to use OpenAI technology.

“Cities are on the front lines of some of the biggest challenges facing communities, and the organizations working alongside them understand what it takes to deliver solutions that work,” says Anna Makanju, Head of Civil Society and Philanthropy at the OpenAI Foundation.

Separate funding for prototypes and tested services

Seed grants of $500,000 to less than $1 million will support organizations refining an idea with a city partner, building and testing a prototype with users, and running a city-based pilot.

Scale grants of $1 million to $2 million are intended for solutions already piloted in a city with early results. That funding will support expansion to more residents or additional cities.

Alongside grants, the initiative will offer opportunities for shared learning and access to networks of city leaders and technical partners. The foundations identify implementation costs and uncertainty around data protection as barriers to AI adoption in local government.

The program follows work begun in 2023, when The Rockefeller Foundation and OpenAI brought together more than 40 civic leaders from six continents. Subsequent projects included dengue outbreak forecasting in Cali, Colombia; an AI-powered resident messaging platform in Cape Town, South Africa; and a WhatsApp chatbot connecting flood alerts and residents’ reports with emergency response systems in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Rockefeller Foundation plans follow-on grants for several of those partners, including an expansion of Dengue.AI from Cali to Cartagena and broader coverage for Rio’s flood-alert system. These remain planned expansions.

Announcing the new call on LinkedIn, the OpenAI Foundation said the initiative would help approaches move “from ideas and early pilots to practical solutions that can reach more people.”

Cities Deliver is managed by RF Catalytic Capital, an affiliate of The Rockefeller Foundation. Initial proposals, including a short video, are due by November 29, 2026. Applicants who advance will be invited to the next selection stage.