AWS Cryptography call for proposals: Fall 2026
AWS offers cryptography research gifts of up to $80,000, plus up to $40,000 in AWS credits. Proposals close 4 November 2026.
The AWS Cryptography call for proposals is a Fall 2026 round of the Amazon Research Awards. It funds cryptography research that protects applications and data in use, in transit, and at rest. Selected principal investigators may receive unrestricted funds of up to $80,000 USD and AWS Promotional Credits of up to $40,000 USD, plus training with Amazon scientists and engineers. Awards are one time unrestricted gifts. The budget should list expected costs in USD and should not include administrative overhead. The awards panel sets the final amount. Decision letters go out in February 2027.
The call groups topics into primitives and protocols, implementation and open source, theory, and security aspects of AI. Examples include formal proofs, cryptanalysis, quantum resistant constructions, verification of open source cryptographic software, compilers and tools for fully homomorphic encryption and multi party computation, and privacy preserving AI inference on encrypted data. If the work is a tool, the proposal should name the license, the training material, and whether the project had commits in the last 3 months.
The same Amazon Research Awards rules apply. The principal investigator must be full time faculty at an accredited academic institution, or a permanent researcher at a non governmental organisation with recognised legal status equivalent to 501(c)(3) status. They must be at or above the age of majority, and may send only one proposal in this call period. Amazon employees cannot receive an award. The program is void in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine.
Proposals should follow the template and are encouraged to be at most 4 pages, not counting appendices. They should say whether the work is theory or application, what it is used for now, how it might apply at Amazon, and what assumptions could weaken the results. You submit through the button on the call page. Amazon says it will weigh impact on Amazon and on the cryptography community, including more students in the field.
The submission period is 1 October to 4 November 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.