Looking for program details? View the AI Efficiency Challenge page
Explore Previous Info Session Content, Register for Upcoming Sessions, and Review FAQs From Our Community
Join an Info Session
Join a live session to hear directly from our program team, get a detailed walkthrough of the challenge, and ask questions in real time.
Next & Final Live Session:
July 7 at 2:00pm ET
June 11, 2026
If you weren’t able to join our last Info Session, you can access the recording of the most recent session below.
Solicitation Details
Read the solicitation details for more information on teaming structure, project scope, eligibility requirements, and application instructions.
Teaming Form
Complete the teaming form to share your organization’s capabilities, project interests, and collaboration needs, and connect with potential team members.
Participant Agreement
Read the participant agreement for more information on requirements, participant responsibilities, terms and conditions, and participation guidelines.
Solicitation Details
Read the solicitation details for more information on teaming structure, project scope, eligibility requirements, and application instructions.
Participant Agreement
Review the participant agreement for information on terms, responsibilities, and conditions for all applicants.
Teaming Form
Complete the teaming form to share your organization’s capabilities, project interests, and collaboration needs, and connect with potential team members.
Per section 5, “The lead applicant … will serve as the primary point of contact and contractual partner that receives funds from STRIDE” The lead applicant is then responsible for all other subawards and collaboration agreements.
The solicitation is silent on this point, and as such no cost share is expected with this challenge. More to the point cost sharing is neither an explicit evaluation criterion nor a selection factor. Including information about cost sharing may however help reviewers assess the “feasibility” of an ambitious proposal plan (see section 5), especially with respect to deployments.
AI Efficiency Challenge funding is non-dilutive.
Yes! Please see the link in the “Resources & Links” portion of the document.
Per section 2, “Solutions Teams must include both solution developers and one or more problem owners (aka catchers) in order to be eligible for this Challenge”. Per section 3, “Up to eight (8) Solution Teams and up to two (2) Benchmarking Teams will be selected to participate in this Challenge”.
See section 5 for detailed eligibility. Capitalization status is not a factor in the determination.
Yes. Please see the link in the “Resources & Links” portion of the document.
It is up to proposers to make their case that the deployment scale they are proposing will be meaningful, i.e., the efficiency gains will be significant in an absolute sense (not just as a % of the baseline). Every team “invited to pitch to a jury of interdisciplinary experts” will have an “opportunity to make the case for its vision: to show how its approach challenges the status quo, redefines what’s possible, and will result in at-scale deployments that yield significant improvements in the efficiency of at-scale AI/ML systems.”
We understand that the 12-month deployment will be preliminary (except for fast tracks). Nonetheless, its scale should be en route to meaningful impact on a production system and not a development / test demonstration.
Per section 7, specific scaling plans will be factored into the reviewers’ consideration of “potential for large efficiency gains”, “feasibility”, whether the proposals will “yield significant improvements in the efficiency of at-scale AI/ML systems” and other aspects of “alignment with the program’s goals”.
The solicitation is silent on this question but in general yes. The catcher organization’s (possibly in a different division of the company relative to the pitchers) letter of commitment is however still needed.
Yes. Per section 5 solutions team must include “A Letter of Intent from the catcher organization describing their commitment to deploy the Solution team’s technology at scale”
Per section 5, “The lead applicant … will serve as the primary point of contact and contractual partner that receives funds from STRIDE”. Whether and how any other collaborating entities are paid is solely between those entities and the lead applicant.
The Participant Agreement will be available shortly, and it contains an IP section for your review. Please see the link in the “Resources & Links” portion of the document.
There is no preference for lead entity type. See section 5 for eligibility criteria.
Although, per section 6, “Applicants are also encouraged to leverage existing federally supported computing and data resources where applicable”, applicants are responsible for determining whether the use of those facilities involves IP constraints and whether those constraints are acceptable to their proposal team. We note that (https://nairrpilot.org/help)
has a disclaimer about IP and encourages Investigators to consult with the relevant resource provider(s) to understand any IP and commercialization constraints and to ensure compliance. Use of NAIRR resources is purely optional.
See solicitation section 6 for details.
No.
Per section 4, the amount proposed must cover the full activities for either the “Regular track” (24 months) or the “Fast track” (12 months). Proposers may request either “Large funding level” (total of $3.5M) or “Medium funding level” (total of $1.75M) independently of which track they wish to propose as their schedule (i.e., Regular vs. Fast track).
Per section 3, “In-scope applications are only those that are translation-ready”. See also the expectations of Stage 2 as outlined in section 4. Per section 7, “The first-round review will assess feasibility, potential for large efficiency gains, and alignment with the program’s goals”.
Per section 5, “Development work funded through this Challenge must be done either in the U.S. or by non-U.S.-based employees of the lead U.S.-based entity. International collaborators can be team members or sub-contractors, but funding will be directly awarded only to U.S.-based organizations. Deployments funded through this Challenge can be done either inside or outside the U.S.”
Not necessarily. It is entirely coincidental that section 3 lists eight illustrative in-scope topics while stating that up to 8 solution teams will be selected.
There is no requirement around indirect costs with STRIDE Ventures Challenges. Please note that the application requests a proposed budget that only shows the fully burdened amounts you are requesting.
See solicitation section 7 for details.
Budget proposals are at the discretion of the applicant.
Ideally, yes, as this will be integral to at-scale deployment of technologies in the context of “catcher”, and broader market, adoption.
The Jury will not be made public prior to the beginning of the challenge. It may, however, be communicated once the awardees have been selected and the challenge has begun.
This use of the word “company” in this sentence was an oversight and has been replaced with the word “applicant”. See solicitation section 5 for eligibility requirements (academic institutions and research organizations” are indeed amongst the eligible organizations).
Yes, subject to research security considerations as described in solicitation section 5.
We are planning a recognition event at the end of a challenge, the Jury will review the progress of all teams in the challenge and assign one or more winners. The winner(s) will be the team(s) that has achieved the greatest impact. There is no financial reward to winning.
In this case, a benchmarking team’s application would still be considered relevant and viable. Benchmarking teams will not know what solutions teams are proposing until after the final selection is made and therefore are not expected to tailor or match these solutions outright. There will be an opportunity for benchmarking teams to refine their plan during Stage 1, i.e., after the solutions selections are known.
See solicitation section 6.
One lead applicant may submit multiple applications with different catchers and project plans. A single lead applicant, though, will not be awarded more than once.
Per section 6, “A Letter of Intent from the catcher organization describing their commitment to deploy the Solution team’s technology at scale.”
LOIs can be submitted as optional additional materials, or as the required catcher proof of commitment. Both of these sections are outside of the concept deep-dive portion of the application and its associated word and page limits.