SFF's HSEE grant round; human intelligence amplification projects I'd like to see

The Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) announced its 2026 themed grant round focused on Human Self-Enhancement and Empowerment (HSEE), with $2–4 million available for organizations working to advance human augmentation. The deadline is July 8, 2026. The fund seeks projects across a wide range of areas including strategy, ethics, brain interfaces, reprogenetics (e.g., chromosome engineering, microfluidics), cellular/molecular reprogramming, and brain gene editing. Applicants must carefully read the eligibility guidelines and submit through SFF’s S-Process, a collective review by recommenders and funders.

A key recommender for the round, who shared personal views on preferred directions, emphasized human intelligence amplification as a core interest. They listed soft questions (policy, governance, advocacy), approach-general technical work on understanding and engineering brains, and specific reprogenetics and neural interface projects. While they have a high bar for recommendations and are opinionated, they aim to use that to efficiently identify high-impact work. Researchers with ambitious scientific projects in these areas are encouraged to apply, but no funding commitments are made by the recommender.