Will Depue Launches $50K Claudestronomy Grant for AI Agents Mining Public Sky Data
willdepue · x · 2026-11-12
Will Depue announced macrogrants, a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit, whose first program is Claudestronomy (a.k.a. Codexstronomy/Grokstronomy): a $50,000 grant pool of tokens, GPU credits and model credits plus a community for anyone using AI agents to make discoveries in public sky archives, open to first-timers and professional astronomers alike.
- Grants range from $500 to $25,000, approved in a day or two, with no application form — just email or text a short project description;
- Organizers say they want to avoid flooding existing astronomy institutions with slop, and are building a community around doing discovery correctly;
- They are also donating funds and time to rehost datasets that may struggle under heavy image downloads;
- A separate invite-only Unemployment Labs gathers unemployed and part-time researchers on frontier projects, with some backed by money, compute and introductions;
- They favor projects where progress is a function of dollars: more compute, scans, tokens or hours directly yield more results.
Depue is soliciting funders, academic advisors and critical feedback.
Related event: macrogrants launches $50K Claudestronomy grant for AI-driven astronomy(2 posts)→
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