Swiss AI Initiative

3rd Large Project Call

The Swiss AI Initiative provides funding to accelerate the research and development of open science artifacts in core areas of foundation model development, as well as target application areas of critical societal importance.

• Declaration of Intent deadline: March 16, 2026

• Full proposal deadline: March 31, 2026

• Decision and project start: July 2026

The Swiss AI Initiative was started in December 2023 and seeded with an initial investment of over 10m GPU hours on Alps (by CSCS) and a grant of 20m CHF by the ETH Domain. The initiative is the largest open science/open source effort for AI foundation models worldwide, and the first initiative of the Swiss National AI Institute, a partnership between the ETH AI Center and the EPFL AI Center. The initiative further benefits from the critical mass of expertise of over 800 researchers (including 70 AI-focused professors) from over 10 academic institutions across Switzerland.

The frontier AI research is enabled by one of the world’s leading AI supercomputer "Alps" (with over 10’000 GH200 GPUs) in collaboration with engineers at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). Regular compute calls are available to bring together researchers from different organizations.The initiative provides artifacts such as transparent and open software, models, and data releases, enabling their trustworthy use by various Swiss stakeholders, including SMEs and start-ups.

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For a full list of Swiss AI members, go to the Swiss AI Members page:

Swiss AI Members