IRCAI Compute for Climate Fellowship 2026
IRCAI and AWS offer up to $200,000 in AWS credits to climate and energy startups. Applications close on September 30, 2026.
The Compute for Climate Fellowship is a global program from the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), a UNESCO centre, and Amazon Web Services. The 2026 round accepts up to 10 startups and provides up to $2 million in grants in the form of AWS credits. Each company can receive up to $200,000 to cover cloud computing costs for a proof of concept, plus about three months of technical support and mentorship.
The fellowship is open to privately held climate and energy technology companies from any country. The company should have been founded within the last 10 years, generally up to Series A, and should have a technical team that can build a proof of concept with cloud computing and AI or machine learning. Startups keep the intellectual property from the project. Companies that are not selected may still apply for $5,000 in AWS credits if they meet the extra rules listed on the page.
Applications are open from September 1 to September 30, 2026. Review and finalist interviews run from October 1 to November 23, 2026. Winners are scheduled to be announced on December 4, 2026. The build period runs from January 11 to April 5, 2027, with a demo day on April 14, 2027. The application form is on the IRCAI site.
IRCAI and AWS ask for work that needs advanced computing in at least one of seven climate and energy areas, including clean energy, climate intelligence, agriculture and water, industrial materials, carbon removal, transport, and buildings and data centres. Extreme heat is a special area of interest for 2026. Proposals should say why advanced computing is necessary, and should show responsible AI practices such as model efficiency, explainability, bias testing, and computing that uses less energy.