Astera Residency

The Astera Residency is a 12-18 month, fully funded program in Emeryville, California for researchers and builders pursuing open-science work that government, academia, and markets systematically under-produce. Residents receive a salary of $125,000–$250,000 commensurate with experience, plus the opportunity to pitch an additional budget of up to $1.5M for team, lab, or infrastructure costs, and access to compute resources via Voltage Park (24,000 NVIDIA HGX H100s plus B200s and GB300s). Focus areas span neuroscience and AI, AI-enabled life sciences, open science infrastructure, and tools/standards/hardware/software development. Projects must be open-first (majority of output publicly accessible and nonproprietary), high-impact (societal scale), and future-focused. Residents assign IP to Astera, which makes it freely and publicly accessible; Astera takes no equity in spin-outs (though it may request follow-on investment rights). Cohort cycles run approximately twice per year; visa sponsorship and relocation funding are provided.

Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.