Amazon Research Awards, Fall 2026: up to USD 80,000 plus cloud credits for research in AI, cybersecurity, cryptography and automated reasoning

Amazon Science has opened applications for the Fall 2026 round of the Amazon Research Awards. The programme provides financial support and cloud computing resources to accelerate academic research across key computer science and engineering disciplines.

Selected principal investigators can receive up to USD 80,000 on average in unrestricted funding, alongside up to USD 40,000 in AWS promotional credits. The submission period closes on November 4, 2026.

What is funded

The Fall 2026 call funds proposals across several focus tracks, including AI for Information Security, AWS Agentic AI, Automated Reasoning, AWS Cryptography, Multilingual and Contextual AI Evaluation, On-Device Multimodal Perception, and Build on Trainium. The call covers advanced fundamental and applied research in these domains.

Support includes an average cash grant of up to USD 80,000 provided as an unrestricted gift and up to USD 40,000 in AWS cloud promotional credits. Awardees also receive training resources and access to Amazon scientists for technical consultations.

Who can apply

Proposals are accepted from principal investigators based at accredited higher education institutions and research organizations. The grant specifically targets researchers working within academic and scientific institutions.

Practical tip. Review your institution’s gift policies early to confirm that your administration accepts unrestricted gifts without indirect costs, as budgets must be submitted in USD without administrative overhead.

Conditions and requirements

Awards are structured as unrestricted gifts directly to the principal investigator’s academic institution or research organization. Because the funding is provided as a gift, Amazon retains no intellectual property rights to the resulting work.

Recipients are actively encouraged to publish their research findings and contribute related code to open-source software repositories. In addition, each funded project is assigned an Amazon research contact who provides advice and invites the team to Amazon events and training sessions.

How to apply

Applicants must develop a formal research proposal tailored to one of the specified research tracks for the Fall 2026 round. Financial requests must be calculated in USD and exclude any university indirect costs or overhead fees.

All proposal documentation must be completed and submitted before the call deadline on November 4, 2026. Late submissions or proposals that fall outside the defined research tracks will not be considered.

Applications are submitted on the donor’s page: amazon.science.