SPAR Research

At the start of this year, Sam Donahue had just left a healthcare AI startup and was trying to work out where he could best contribute to AI alignment. Today he's a Research Scientist at AE Studio, part of a team working on methods to keep AI systems aligned, even as they start to hit recursive self-improvement. It's a role he first came across through the BlueDot community. Before that, Sam built AI systems for healthcare and was a SPAR research fellow, researching Chinese and open-source frontier AI. But he needed a map of the field. He took our intensive Technical AI Safety course in January. "The course gave me a phenomenal overview of the field of AI safety. It helped me understand both where I could personally contribute the most and what areas could be the most impactful." One of his course groupmates is now his colleague at AE Studio.

𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗱- 𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿-𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆? Apply to the upcoming Global Challenges Project workshop for experienced professionals! The last few weeks have brought AI safety into the mainstream. Dario Amodei called on the industry to pace the frontier, OpenAI disclosed that its own agents had autonomously broken into Hugging Face and the Australian government, and Jacob Coxon's resignation from Anthropic was noticed by millions around the globe. If you have been following this and wondering where someone with your background and skills fits in, this workshop is for you. 🌍 The Global Challenges Project is bringing around 30 mid-career and senior professionals together for three days during the 6-9th of November to:  • Speak directly with leading researchers, policy people, operators, and fieldbuilders about how they read the current moment  • Work out what a move into AI safety could look like for you, and where you can best deploy your skills  • Build relationships with other professionals considering similar career transitions Our last three workshops were a great success, and we're already seeing early signs of their impact on participants' careers. Travel, meals, and accommodation are fully covered. ⏰ Applications close 𝟵 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 - link to learn more and apply in the comments 👇

We're excited to announce that Aris Richardson has joined Kairos as our Head of Generator! Aris will lead the Generator Residency, our program for AI safety generalists, run in partnership with Constellation Institute in Berkeley. Before joining Kairos, she managed the AI strategy and governance stream of Astra, Constellation's research fellowship, and served as a research manager for the Anthropic Safety Fellows program. Fellows she has mentored have gone on to roles at Coefficient Giving, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Center for AI Safety, and the European AI Office. Aris is also an Assistant Policy Researcher at RAND, where she has worked on the compute team under Lennart Heim and with the Center for the Geopolitics of AGI. She is completing a PhD in policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy on the geopolitics of transformative AI. Earlier, she was a research fellow at GovAI and ERA Cambridge (where she has since mentored three cohorts), worked as community manager at MATS Research, founded the UC Berkeley AI safety group, and founded and ran the Good Futures fellowship. We've already had the chance to work with Aris twice, when she ran the Generator extension and when she mentored the SPAR Spring 2026 project "The Geopolitics of AI Middle Powers". We're glad to have her on the team full-time. Applications for the next Generator Residency open soon. To hear when they do, sign up through the expression of interest form linked in the comments.

Come work at Kairos! We have raised $50 million from Coefficient Giving for two years of funding to grow the next generation of leaders in AI safety, and we now need exceptional people to help us scale. In May I left the UK AISI to join Kairos because the largest constraint on AI safety right now is talent. We will run out of people well before we run out of ideas or money. Joining has been an incredible decision, and not only for the impact. The team is exceptional and coming to work is a joy. Every day I work with some of the most talented, impact-driven people I have ever met. Shout out to Neav, Agustín, Rebecca, Antonia, Jeremy, Jesse, Robert, Helena, Julian, Bryan, Andrés, and Skye. Kairos has supported well over a thousand people through SPAR Research, the Pathfinder Fellowship, the Generator Residency and the Global Challenges Project. We are now scaling rapidly and have 10 open roles across the org. Applications close September 25, 2026. Three of those roles are on my team: GCP Program Manager - Full-time, Remote with travel Generalist (Workshops) x2 - Full-time, Remote with travel I am expanding our workshop portfolio at speed and need people who can own a programme end to end, iterate quickly and show real agency. The team will grow our existing workshops and experiment with new formats for new audiences. If you are driven, mission-aligned and can see yourself excelling at planning and delivering workshops, apply. If you know someone who is world-class and takes risks from advanced AI seriously, send them our way. All roles are at kairos-project.org/careers

Kairos has raised $50 million from Coefficient Giving, two years of funding to grow the next generation of leaders in AI safety. Agus and I started Kairos 2 years ago because we thought AI safety was going to be short on people well before it was short on money or ideas. Since then, we’ve supported over a thousand people through SPAR Research, the Pathfinder Fellowship, the Generator Residency, and the Global Challenges Project. Many of them now do critical work full time at core AI safety orgs. We’ve built infrastructure that works and scales, so we're going big. In January we were 3 people, today we're 12, and we're aiming for 18 by the end of the year. We're scaling up SPAR and our Group teams and launching Kairos Labs (an incubator for new AI safety organizations), a Talent Operations team, a Workshops team, and a Special Projects team to go after high-impact opportunities as they come up. To do all that, we’re assembling a world-class team of people who take risks from advanced AI seriously. We're hiring for 10 roles right now, and there's a lot of important work to do! If that sounds like you, or someone you know, take a look at our open roles: https://lnkd.in/gcaGszCk Thank you to Coefficient Giving and the GCR Capacity Building team for supporting us, and to our mentors, organizers, and partners. Thank you to my amazing co-founder, Agustín, who I couldn’t have done this without. And to our incredible team, who have worked very hard to get us to this moment: Rebecca, Antonia, Jeremy, Jesse, Sam, Robert, Helena, Julian, Bryan, Andrés, and Skye. I’m so grateful and proud of each of you and what we've built. I’m very excited about what we’ll accomplish together in the next 2 years. We're just getting started! (p.s. peep our new website -> https://lnkd.in/gPrBaEiN)

We’re excited to introduce our newest Kairos team members! The following 6 people have been hired at Kairos since May of this year.  • Sam Glendenning, Head of Workshops  • Robert Gledhill, Head of Operations  • Helena Dias, Senior Operations Manager  • Julian Moncarz, Generalist (Talent Operations)  • Bryan Sukidi, Generalist (Talent Operations)  • Andrés Cotton, SPAR Program Lead We're excited to have them on the team and for the great things they will do in the upcoming months. If you'd like to join them, we currently have 10 open roles. Applications are rolling, so apply here today: https://lnkd.in/gaJX6fQQ

I've joined Kairos to lead SPAR Research, the largest AI safety fellowship in the world! Our mission is to get more talented people working on the fundamental problems posed by advanced AI, which is deeply transforming our society. I'm incredibly excited to build on what SPAR has already achieved and very grateful to Agustín C. and Neav Topaz for this opportunity. PS: We've raised $50 million and are actively hiring across the board. You can check out our open roles here: https://lnkd.in/eU4WGVSn If you are interested in working with me, take a closer look at the "SPAR Research Manager / Generalist" role 😉

So proud of this team 🎉 When I joined Kairos, the team was just Rebecca Baron, Neav Topaz and Agustín C.. I was immensely impressed by what a team of three could accomplish, and by their dedication to the mission. I've learned so much from them! Now, the team has grown, and it's honestly one of the most capable and generous teams I've ever been part of. People here really care about the work, their colleagues, Kairos's mission and the impact we can have. With our new funding, we're continuing to grow. We're hiring for 10 roles right now (https://lnkd.in/gcaGszCk), and if you want to work with people who genuinely care about what they're building, this is your chance. If you're on the fence, just apply!

Kairos has raised $50 million from Coefficient Giving, two years of funding to grow the next generation of leaders in AI safety. Agus and I started Kairos 2 years ago because we thought AI safety was going to be short on people well before it was short on money or ideas. Since then, we’ve supported over a thousand people through SPAR Research, the Pathfinder Fellowship, the Generator Residency, and the Global Challenges Project. Many of them now do critical work full time at core AI safety orgs. We’ve built infrastructure that works and scales, so we're going big. In January we were 3 people, today we're 12, and we're aiming for 18 by the end of the year. We're scaling up SPAR and our Group teams and launching Kairos Labs (an incubator for new AI safety organizations), a Talent Operations team, a Workshops team, and a Special Projects team to go after high-impact opportunities as they come up. To do all that, we’re assembling a world-class team of people who take risks from advanced AI seriously. We're hiring for 10 roles right now, and there's a lot of important work to do! If that sounds like you, or someone you know, take a look at our open roles: https://lnkd.in/gcaGszCk Thank you to Coefficient Giving and the GCR Capacity Building team for supporting us, and to our mentors, organizers, and partners. Thank you to my amazing co-founder, Agustín, who I couldn’t have done this without. And to our incredible team, who have worked very hard to get us to this moment: Rebecca, Antonia, Jeremy, Jesse, Sam, Robert, Helena, Julian, Bryan, Andrés, and Skye. I’m so grateful and proud of each of you and what we've built. I’m very excited about what we’ll accomplish together in the next 2 years. We're just getting started! (p.s. peep our new website -> https://lnkd.in/gPrBaEiN)

Very excited to be on this team and to be helping grow our programs, and Kairos itself, so ambitiously ❤️