NVIDIA Academic Grant Program
Provides in-kind GPU compute and hardware to faculty-led research at PhD-granting universities.
Eligibility · Global — open worldwide
The NVIDIA Academic Grant Program awards in-kind GPU compute and physical hardware to faculty-led research projects at PhD-granting universities worldwide. Awards are unrestricted gifts — no cash is transferred, no intellectual property is assigned to NVIDIA — and recipients are asked only to acknowledge NVIDIA in resulting publications and provide semi-annual progress updates. Three active calls for proposals run in 2026: Simulation and Modeling (scientific simulation, quantum computing, physics-informed ML), AI Training and Model Development (scaling and customizing generative AI), and AI Inference, Agents, and Systems Software (compound AI systems and systems software). Resource awards vary by track: the Simulation and AI Training tracks offer up to 30,000 NVIDIA H100 80 GB hours; the Inference track adds two NVIDIA DGX Sparks systems on top of the same hour allocation.
Eligibility is restricted to full-time faculty members at accredited institutions that award PhD research degrees; no industry applicants, nonprofits, or students may apply as principal investigators. Proposals must incorporate pretrained models from ai.nvidia.com or make extensive use of NVIDIA software distributions. Each PI or research group may submit one proposal per quarter, with a maximum of four per year, and each individual may receive only one award per calendar year. Submission windows are quarterly (Jan–Mar, Apr–Jun, Jul–Sep, Oct–Dec), with decisions announced the following quarter. The Apr 1–Jun 30 2026 window yields decisions in September 2026.
Selection is competitive and not all eligible proposals are funded. NVIDIA evaluates technical merit, viability of the project timeline, justification for the compute request, and clarity of the dataset. Additional weight goes to innovative or novel use cases, open-source contributions, and positive social impact. Applications are submitted through the Salesforce-based portal at academicgrants.nvidia.com. Previous awardees must submit results through the portal before becoming eligible for a subsequent award. No overhead or indirect costs can be charged against awards.
GPU cloud compute and hardware awards for faculty-led research at PhD-granting universities worldwide, across three active tracks: scientific simulation and quantum computing, AI training and model development, and AI inference and compound AI systems.
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