The Rockefeller Foundation and the OpenAI Foundation launched a $50 million grant programme on October 14, 2026 to help cities use artificial intelligence in the services residents rely on every day. Called Cities Deliver: AI Solutions for Public Services, it is a global open call that will fund organisations working alongside city governments, with individual awards between $500,000 and $2 million. The partners say the projects they back should together reach as many as 100 million urban residents. Reuters reported the partnership the same day.
Eligibility is deliberately narrow. Applicants must be nonprofits, a category that includes university labs and fiscally sponsored groups, or public benefit corporations; for-profit companies qualify only in limited cases where the project is charitable. City governments cannot apply on their own behalf, but every proposal needs a city partner that has committed to the work. Each project must make frontier AI central to the solution, and applicants may pick whichever models and products suit them. The foundations state there is no requirement or preference for OpenAI technology.
Four themes define what will be funded. Public health covers frontline care, disease surveillance, disability services and nutrition. Economic mobility targets benefits enrolment, career navigation and skills-based hiring. Environmental resilience spans emergency services, grid infrastructure and land management in exposed communities. Civic engagement includes two-way service channels, court services and permitting. Anything related to voting or elections is excluded.
According to the programme FAQ, grants come in two tracks. Seed awards, from $500,000 up to $1 million, pay for a first pilot of an early concept with a city. Scale awards of $1 million to $2 million go to solutions that have already shown early results and want to expand within a city or to another one. Every grant lasts 24 months, with half paid upfront and half after a documented mid-term milestone, and none guarantees follow-on money. Grantees also join a cohort with mentoring and evaluation help, plus occasional AI product and engineering support when capacity allows. Questions close on October 31, first-round proposals are due November 29, 2026, interviews follow in January and second-round proposals are due March 1, 2027.
The initiative grows out of a 2023 meeting the Rockefeller Foundation and OpenAI convened, which drew over 40 civic leaders from six continents. Rockefeller then funded pilots in three cities and plans follow-on grants for them: a flood-warning service in Rio de Janeiro that sends alerts over WhatsApp, the Dengue.AI outbreak forecaster moving from Cali to Cartagena, and a resident-engagement platform in Cape Town. Cali's mayor, Alejandro Eder, credits Dengue.AI with giving the city up to three weeks of warning before outbreaks, a claim that has not been independently evaluated.
The OpenAI Foundation is a nonprofit legally separate from OpenAI PBC, and Anna Makanju leads its civil society and philanthropy work. Rockefeller president Rajiv Shah described the programme as a way to open what worked in the pilot cities to institutions everywhere. Cities Deliver is administered by RF Catalytic Capital, a Rockefeller affiliate. The announcement does not break down how much of the $50 million each foundation is contributing.
For city technology teams, the money addresses barriers the release itself names: implementation cost and uncertainty about data protection. The open questions are how many projects will be funded, how outcomes will be measured beyond each grantee's own learning plan, and whether services built with two years of philanthropic money can move onto municipal budgets afterwards. The 100 million figure is a target, not a result.