Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal
Participants rated the program highly: they estimated it accelerated their founding journey by ~11 months total on average. At the end of (the online) Phase 1 of the program, 66% of participants indicated that time spent in Phase 1 of the program was 3-10x or 10x+ as valuable as how they would have spent their time otherwise. At the end of Phase 2 (in-person), 85% of participants indicated this.
Please find an overview organizations incubated in the program here: https://www.catalyze-impact.org/post/introducing-11-new-ai-safety-organizations-catalyze-incubation-program-cohort-winter-2024-25
To highlight some examples, these are three promising organizations that came out of our Nov-Feb '25 incubation program pilot:
• Luthien: Developing Redwood's AI Control approach into a production-ready solution. Founded by Jai Dhyani, an experienced ML engineer (Meta, Amazon) and MATS 6.0 graduate where he worked with METR. Within two months of its existence, Luthien has already secured nearly 190k$ through our Seed Funding Circle.
• Wiser Human: a non-profit modeling AI threats for agentic use cases, producing compelling demos to hold AI devs accountable to safety commitments. Co-founded by Francesca Gomez, who worked in digital risk management for many years and has a background in AI, and Sebastien Ben M'Barek, an experienced digital risk management professional with a software engineering & product management background. Wiser Human has received 15k$ in donations from our Seed Funding Circle.
• Coordinal Research: a non-profit accelerating technical AIS agendas with research automation. Co-founded by Ronak Mehta, a CS Postdoc & MATS 6.0 graduate, and Jacques Thibodeau, a former data scientist and MATS graduate, previous founder and independent alignment researcher focused on automating alignment research. Coordinal has secured 110k$ in seed funding through members of our Seed Funding Circle.
Please find a few of the testimonials from program graduates below:
Jai Dhyani (Luthien): “Catalyze gave me the structure, information, and connections I needed to make Luthien a reality. When I started I had no idea how to build a company or a non-profit, but by the end of Catalyze I not only felt confident in my ability to get started, I was (and remain) optimistic that I will actually succeed in making a meaningful difference. Within three months of the end of the program I had over a year of runway and was well on my way to deploying an MVP.”
Cecilia Callas (AI safety comms organization): “Participating in Catalyze Impact was completely transformational for my career journey into AI Safety. (...) being immersed in a community of like-minded AI safety entrepreneurs and having access to advisors helped my co-founder and I to be much more successful, and much more quickly. (...) Within a few months of the Catalyze program concluding, we have secured seed funding for our AI safety communications project, have a clear direction for our organization and perhaps most importantly, were have affirmed that we could build careers in AI Safety”
Francesca Gomez (Wiser Human): “The Catalyze Impact AI Safety Incubator really helped get our AI Safety work off the ground. Weekly sessions with the team and Catalyze’s group of mentors, domain experts in AI Safety, gave us first‑hand, candid feedback that really sharpened our thinking, which would not have been possible to do outside of the programme. By the time the cohort wrapped up, we had mapped a roadmap, secured initial seed funding, and produced the materials that later underpinned our larger grant applications. Another big benefit for us was how Catalyze plugged us straight into the London AI Safety ecosystem. (...) the sense of accountability and the ongoing flow of expertise continue to be invaluable as we grow.”
Ronak Mehta (Coordinal Research): “The Catalyze program was integral to the foundation of Coordinal Research. The mentorship, networking, and co-founder matching all directly contributed to the organization's founding. Having a dedicated, full-time commitment and space for 1) learning how to build an organization, 2) building out proofs of concept, and 3) networking with AI safety researchers, funders, and other founders was necessary, valuable, and fun, and I cannot imagine a scenario where Coordinal would exist without Catalyze. Learning what it takes to build a new organization alongside like-minded founders dedicated to AI safety was so valuable, in a way that typical startup incubators couldn't provide. The accountability felt extremely genuine, with everyone seriously considering how their organization could effectively contribute to AI safety.”
Spending breakdown
We spent the ~16k$ we raised here primarily on salaries and runway before getting the pilot program funded, as outlined in the comments to this grant.