Astral Codex Ten

ACX Grants

14 min read

ACX Grants

Article

ACX Grants is a recurring event in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 21 times across 21 issues between December 28, 2021 and October 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants”; “I’d like to try running this year’s ACX Grants through impact markets”; “for example, the 2021 ACX Grants”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Astralcodexten Com, Discord.

Metadata

  • Category: Events
  • Mention count: 21
  • Issue count: 21
  • First seen: December 28, 2021
  • Last seen: October 13, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

ACX Grants Results
December 28, 2021 · Original source
Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants, whether as an applicant, an evaluator, or a funder.
Without further ado: ACX Grants Awardees Pedro Silva, $60,000, to use in silico reverse screening and molecular dynamics simulations to discover the targets of seven promising natural antibiotics and to try to develop wider-spectrum derivatives. Antibiotic resistant infections kill a 5-6 digit number of people each year, and this is the kind of basic research that could lead to new drugs somewhere down the line.
…via ACX Grants + : This is the part where I sent your grants around to interested rich people and foundations, and let them decide if they wanted to fund some on their own. Unfortunately, rich people and foundations don’t have huge amounts of time to evaluate grants on super-short notice around the Christmas season, so I haven’t heard back from many of them yet. I know of two projects that are on track to get funded this way. but I don’t have permission to talk about them here yet. Your funders should be reaching out to you shortly.
Impact Markets: The Annoying Details
July 15, 2022 · Original source
I said last year that I’d like to try running this year’s ACX Grants through impact markets. Since then, some people have expressed interest in the technical implementation, and - to nobody’s surprise more than my own - it’s starting to look like it could happen.
Inline links: ACX Grants
B: Committed Pot Of Money (aka The Original ACX Grants Plan)
In the original ACX Grants plan, I solicit grant proposals, and probably get ~500 like last year. I promise to be Final Oracular Funder and give out prizes in one year’s time, and I commit a specific sum to this purpose (let’s say $1 million). I link everyone who’s interested to a market where people can buy shares in the project, and they do this, competing for my $1 million.
Open Thread 244
October 02, 2022 · Original source
1: I’m trying to collect information on how last year’s ACX Grants winners are doing. I should have emailed everyone involved a form, but I know that the emails to Michael Sklar and 1DaySooner bounced, and based on how few responses I’ve gotten I worry some others have as well. If this is you, please fill in this form by October 15. If you didn’t get an ACX Grant last year, no need to worry about this.
Inline links: this form
From The Mailbag
October 25, 2022 · Original source
DEAR SCOTT: When is the next ACX Grants round? — Jennifer from Men-Nefer
ACX Grants: Project Updates
November 04, 2022 · Original source
Thanks to everyone who got ACX Grants (see original grants here) and sent me a one-year update.
Inline links: see original grants here
Depending on how various impact-market-related people do, I’ll probably have a second round of ACX Grants sometime between now and mid-2023.
Open Thread 262
February 06, 2023 · Original source
5: ACX Grants update: You may remember Lars Doucet from his guest posts on Georgism. Last year, he and Will Jarvis received an ACX Grant to work on land value assessment technology that might make land value taxes more tractable and appealing. They’re happy to announce that this has turned into a startup, ValueBase, which raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Congratulations to Lars, Will, and the ValueBase team for what I think is the second ACX Grants project to become a $1 million + company.
Inline links: guest posts, received an ACX Grant, ValueBase, raised $1.6 million in seed funding
Open Thread 300
October 30, 2023 · Original source
1: I’m working on another round of ACX Grants. My current plan is to use mid-5 to low-6 figures of my own money but also solicit extra funding from others. If you might be interested in donating a large amount (≥ $50K) please email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com so I can answer any questions you might have and get a sense of how much interest there is.
2: Speaking of ACX Grants, one of last round’s grants went to Lars Doucet and Will Jarvis to research Georgist land value taxes; they later started the company ValueBase. Now they’re trying to coordinate support for a potential upcoming land value tax in Detroit. If you live in Michigan and want to help, they want to talk to you about the best ways to contact your state representative. Please get in touch with them via this form.
Inline links: ValueBase, land value tax in Detroit, via this form
Apply For An ACX Grant (2024)
December 08, 2023 · Original source
I’m running another ACX Grants round. If you already know what this is and want to apply, use the form here to apply, deadline December 29. Otherwise see below for more information.
Inline links: the form here
I think of this as unearned money and want to give some of it back to the community, hence this grants program. I have a lot of it but not an unlimited amount. At the current rate, I can probably afford another ~4 ACX Grants rounds. When it runs out, I‘ll just be a normal person with normal amounts of money (Substack is great, but not great enough for me to afford this level of donation consistently).
What is ACX Grants?
Open Thread 306
December 11, 2023 · Original source
6: On Friday I asked people with interesting charitable projects to apply for the new round of ACX Grants. Reading the first few applications, I’m seeing some that would be a better match for angel investors. If you’re in this category and want to see some proposals, please email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com.
Inline links: apply for the new round of ACX Grants
Open Thread 308
December 24, 2023 · Original source
1: Remember, ACX Grants application deadline is December 29. That’s this Friday!
Inline links: ACX Grants application deadline
Open Thread 313
January 29, 2024 · Original source
6: I’m still waiting for some technical issues to get resolved for this year’s ACX Grants. Depending on how that goes, I’ll post results either this Friday, or next Friday.
Open Thread 314
February 05, 2024 · Original source
6: ACX Grants results will probably be announced Friday, February 9. Sorry for the delay.
ACX Grants Results 2024
February 10, 2024 · Original source
The next ACX Grants round will be either January 2025 or January 2026 - depending on my schedule, the economy, and the level of interest.
Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants, whether as an applicant, an evaluator, or a funder.
The best part of ACX Grants is telling the winners they won, which I’ll do in a moment. The worst part of ACX Grants is telling the non-winners they didn’t win. If I wasn’t able to give you a grant, it doesn’t mean I hate your project. Sometimes I couldn’t find the right evaluator to confirm that you were legit. Sometimes I sent your project to foundations or VCs who I thought it would be a better match for, or wanted to leave it as a test case for the impact market. Most of the time, I just didn’t have enough money1, and I spent what I had according to my own imperfect priorities.
Inline links: 1
Open Thread 315
February 12, 2024 · Original source
1: Thanks to everyone who commented on this year’s ACX Grants. Reminder that you can go to Manifund to learn more about ACX Grants projects, comment on individual efforts, and donate to the ones that need more funding.
Inline links: on this year’s ACX Grants, Manifund
ACX Grants Followup Impact Market
March 07, 2024 · Original source
I don’t do any more ACX Grants rounds because I lose all my money / become greedy / die. In this case you’ll have to sell your certificates to one of our partners; if you can’t find one who will take it, your certificates will go to $0.
We got 351 proposals for ACX Grants, but were only able to fund 34 of them. I’m not a professional grant evaluator and can’t guarantee there aren’t some jewels hidden among the remaining 317.
Inline links: ACX Grants
First, although about 140 of you expressed interest in and qualified for the impact market round, only 44 have responded to emails from Manifund, signed the necessary documents, and actually gotten featured. So there are only 44 proposals on the market so far. If you want to participate in the impact market, but aren’t on there yet, please check your email and spam folder for messages from Manifund. If you didn’t get any, but you applied to ACX Grants and want to participate, please email rachel@manifund.org.
Open Thread 387
June 23, 2025 · Original source
1: I’m looking for a VC/investment/nonprofit lawyer who can answer some questions for ACX Grants, most likely ending in drawing up a contract for something like a grant which is convertible to equity if the grantee becomes a startup (or if this is a bad idea, explaining why). I will pay your normal rate for this service, I’m just asking here because I trust people in the ACX community more than whoever lands at the top of a Google search. Email scott@slatestarcodex.com if interested.
Open Thread 392
July 28, 2025 · Original source
2: I made some mistakes linking the forms on the ACX Grants post; these were corrected pretty quickly, but in case you missed it here are the correct links:
Inline links: ACX Grants post
If you want to help fund ACX Grants (warning: we are on track to being overfunded, although not there yet - if you want to help, consider pledging money so we can ask you for it if needed, but not yet donating, so that I don’t have to return it to you if we can’t find enough good grants with room for funding)
Inline links: If you want to help fund
Open Thread 394
August 11, 2025 · Original source
1: This is your last chance to apply for this year’s ACX Grants. Deadline is end-of-day PST this Friday.
Inline links: apply for this year’s ACX Grants
Open Thread 395
August 18, 2025 · Original source
1: Thanks to everyone who applied to ACX Grants. I still hope to inform winners by October 1. This remains a goal but not a promise.
Open Thread 400
September 22, 2025 · Original source
2: Post frequency might decrease for the next few weeks as I finish ACX Grants. I still hope to alert awardees at the beginning of October, and I’ll announce results on the blog sometime in early- to mid-October.
ACX Grants Results 2025
October 13, 2025 · Original source
The next ACX Grants round will probably begin late 2026 or early 2027.
Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants, whether as an applicant, an evaluator, or a funder.
Markus Englund, $50K, for software to detect data fabrication. This kind of thing is a perennial ACX Grants favorite, and we don’t always expect it to go anywhere, but Markus got our attention by saying that he’s already built the tool, already scanned 92 published papers, and found “irregularities” in five of them, inspiring two corrigenda and one likely upcoming retraction. Five out of ninety-two is a crazy result, and we’re almost scared to see what happens when he applies his program to a further 20,000 papers, which is the amount that our grant will be paying for. If you’re interested in helping verify cases of suspected data fabrication and presenting the evidence in Pubpeer comments or emails to journal editors, please contact Markus at markus@englund.dev, especially if you have solid knowledge of statistics or biology.
Inline links: markus@englund.dev