tinygrad bounties for open source GPU and compiler work
tinygrad pays cash bounties of $200 to $2,000 for merged work on its open source deep learning framework, from GPU emulators to new backends.
tinygrad bounties are cash rewards for improvements to tinygrad, an MIT licensed deep learning framework. The project README says tinygrad offers cash bounties for certain improvements to the library, and the list of open tasks lives in a public spreadsheet. Many tasks are close to the hardware: GPU emulators, drivers, assembly backends and running large models fast on consumer chips.
The current open list runs from $200 to $2,000 per task. Examples include $500 for a QCOM A630 emulator, $600 for mergeable USB4 support on Chestnut, $1,000 for a cycle accurate RDNA3 emulator and $1,000 for an RDNA3 assembly backend. The sheet also explains the scale: $100 bounties are a few lines, $200 bounties take a few hours to a day, $500 bounties take a couple of days, and anything above $1,000 needs planning and probably a week or more of work.
The sheet sets no limits on who can take part. Some tasks need specific hardware, such as an NVIDIA or RDNA3 GPU, and the sheet lists this for each row. Code must be clean and maintainable without serious hacks, and all payouts are at the discretion of George Hotz. Training bounties must be reproducible in under 24 hours, and you have to post trained weights that meet the accuracy target.
To start, pick an open task in the sheet and submit a good work in progress pull request on GitHub to lock it. Yellow rows are locked to an owner, blue rows are waiting for review and green rows are done. Questions go to the tinygrad Discord. The sheet says regular bounty work can lead to an internship and then a full time job.
The program is active. A bounty for the QCOM A630 emulator was locked to a contributor on 6 October 2026, and its pull request was still being worked on in mid October. Anyone who wants to sponsor a new bounty can email george@tinygrad.org with a description and a dollar amount.
Quick answers
How do I claim a bounty?
Pick an uncolored row in the bounty sheet and lock it by opening a good work in progress pull request. It stays yours while you show forward progress at least every five days.
Can I use AI to write my pull request?
The sheet warns that you must understand every line you submit and vouch that it is ready to merge. Low quality or unfinished pull requests lead to a ban from the GitHub repository without warning. One current bounty says no AI at all.
How is it paid?
In USDC on Ethereum, or by PayPal if you insist.