Published on December 15, 2025 4:25 PM GMT

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with this fund and don’t know it in depth. I came across it via the European AI & Society Fund’s newsletter. From a quick skim, it doesn’t appear to focus on existential risk, but it may be relevant for work in adjacent areas.

Learn more and apply here.

From the newsletter:

The Digital Freedom Fund supports strategic litigation in Europe that contributes to advancing human rights that relate to the use of technology and/or are engaged in the context of digital spaces. They will fund two types of activities – litigation track support and pre-litigation research support. Deadline for applications 17 February. Find out more about the fund criteria, ‘ask us anything’ calls and previous grantees.

ChatGPT summary of the linked page:

What DFF funds

• DFF is a Netherlands-based non-profit that funds strategic litigation and related legal work aimed at advancing digital rights and human rights in digital spaces across Europe.
• Grants support strategic litigation, pre-litigation research, and, more recently, post-litigation activities.
• Their definition of “strategic litigation” means legal cases intended to have broader impact beyond individual parties, potentially influencing policy, law, or systemic conditions.
• Examples include challenges to surveillance tech, algorithmic transparency, discriminatory tech use, content censorship, and privacy enforcement—typical digital-rights legal issues.

Who they fund and how

• Eligible applicants are typically NGOs, digital-rights groups, pro-bono lawyers, and allied social justice organisations working in the digital human rights context.
• They have funded nearly 150 projects totalling over €5 million and work mostly within Council of Europe member states.
• Recent updates show continued rounds of grants focused on digital rights litigation. 

Some AI-related activity

• DFF recently launched an AI and Digital Infrastructure Strategic Litigation Hub aimed at litigation related to harms from AI and digital infrastructure (e.g., accountability of big tech and governments for harms arising from AI). 

Relevance to existential risk / extinction risk work

• Direct existential risk funding? There’s no indication that DFF funds core existential risk projects or mainstream AI safety research that focuses on catastrophic risk modeling, alignment research, or other long-term risk work. Their grants are court- and rights-focused.
• Adjacent relevance: Some work on AI accountability, discriminatory outcomes, surveillance, and power concentration in AI systems may be tangentially relevant to concerns about the societal impacts of AI. The existence of the AI Hub suggests they are thinking about litigation around harmful AI effects, but this is still about rights and liability rather than existential risk reduction.