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SOLOGRANTS

Microgrants for solo builders

The world is made of passion projects.

We want more of them in the world, so we fund the people building them.

Solo Grants cover the parts, compute, and materials, from $100 to $1,000, that stand between a passion project and the first version that works.

Apply for a grant →See what we funded

No equity · No strings attached

What we believe

Passion pointed at a hard problem is the most valuable thing in the world.The financial gap between things getting built or not is smaller than most people think.

Funded & building

Here’s what the money bought.

We’ve funded builders naming new viruses, predicting wildfires, and bringing ML to chip design. Each one started with a thousand bucks or less.

Power-Line Drone

Brian L.

An autonomous drone that inspects power-line infrastructure.

Bill of materials
Pixhawk PX4 controller$100
Raspberry Pi 4$100
Pi camera$40
+11 more line items
FUNDED$500

Phagebase

Aaryan H.

Building the world’s largest open database of viruses.

Bill of materials
Airtable database credits$100
FUNDED$100

Particle Accelerator

Simon S.

An open-source particle accelerator, built in a basement.

Bill of materials
Turbo molecular pump$400
Ion source (sputtering)$419
UHV drift tube$181
FUNDED$1,000

Exoskeleton

Santiago D.

A motorized exoskeleton, engineered from a dorm room.

Bill of materials
Actuator motors ×2$300
Encoders + force sensors$200
CNC joint parts$200
+5 more line items
FUNDED$1,000

See Through Walls

Jared M.

An AR headset that sees through walls using WiFi as radar.

Bill of materials
LiteSDR Mini ×2$158
RF components$127
Custom PCB fab$85
+3 more line items
FUNDED$700

VR Treadmill

Chloe N.

An omni-directional VR treadmill for walking through virtual worlds.

Bill of materials
DC motors ×40$632 CAD
PLA filament ×19$532 CAD
Thrust bearings ×400$96 CAD
FUNDED$900

The full ledger

50+ grantees and counting

  • Luka R.

    Amtavla is developing a Sub-vocal Recognition system that decodes silent speech from biosignals to create a frictionless, wearable brain-computer interface for everyday human use

    $350
  • Andrei T.

    A deliberate LLM-first experiment to create modern charged particle optics simulation software

    $1,000
  • Lokanatha H.

    LONG RANGE AERIAL FPV PLATFORMS

    $600
  • Wiktoria P.

    A foundation model that decodes bioelectric state spaces to predict and control tissue growth, healing, and disease

    $1,000
  • Simon S.

    Open-Source Particle Accelerator

    $1,000
  • Anubhav N.

    Making seafloor-based charging stations to enable more functionality from underwater vehicles

    $975
  • Abhinav J.

    Making robots capable of learning new tasks outside their training distribution efficiently

    $979
  • Neo P.

    Low cost autonomous UAV that uses onboard computer vision to identify hazards and generate real time safe route maps for first responders.

    $1,000
  • Ali S.

    Device you place near your window and it cancels the sound coming from outside your room.

    $1,000
  • Andre S.

    PETRA - Fostering Metal for Tomorrow

    $1,000
  • Yuvraj B.

    a Rust-first, TorchScript-deployed field‑level emulator that predicts total‑matter weak‑lensing maps (including baryons) from dark‑matter inputs in under a second on CPU.

    $999
  • Sophia P.

    Build wireless "beacons" (EMG BLE sensors to integrate with mobile phones and other Bluetooth devices)

    $1,000
  • Nitish M.

    I'm building autonomous underwater robots to clean ship propellers while loading unloading at ports.

    $1,000
  • Charles Y.

    Fully autonomous 1m wingspan VTOL costing just $1k

    $1,000
  • Rowan C.

    Revolutionise the edible oil industry with backyard biotechnology

    $970
  • Julie D.

    We're building the Shazam for heart sounds: A handheld AI-powered device that puts cardiologist-level knowledge in the palm of your hand.

    $990
  • Carl O.

    An automated testing environment for engineers working on hardware

    $250
  • Siddharth N.

    A CNC Mill designed to manufacture PCBs by milling copper-clad board.

    $615
  • Baichuan O.

    Brininging Autonomously Controlled Rockets to Ametur Rocketry

    $600
  • Abdul Moheet S.

    Democratizing bioprinting in Pakistan by building a low-cost, open-source Printess 3D printer to explore tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

    $355
  • Reagan M.

    Turning plastic waste into clean cooking fuel through low-cost solar-powered pyrolysis to reduce reliance on wood fuel and indoor air pollution.

    $385
  • Sean S.

    In Silico modeling of combinatorial gene perturbations to improve neuronal transplantation/cell therapy outcomes

    $250
  • Chloe N.

    Omni-directional VR treadmill

    $900
  • Rishi G.

    Making every crop on Earth machine-readable.

    $1,000
  • Andrew S.

    Synchrotron is a graph-based live audio processing engine implemented entirely in pure Python, which can replicate a digital signal processing (DSP) engine, a synthesiser, a MIDI instrument, and more.

    $900
  • Yoyo Y.

    growing neurons and measuring cognitive complexity

    $1,000
  • Jared M.

    Augmented-reality, VR HMD which can see through walls using WiFi as radar — useful for first-responders.

    $700
  • Shaan Y.

    An open source, modular, and autonomous research vessel capable of traveling long distances highly efficiently. Deploy once, research anywhere on Earth within hours.

    $800
  • Sebastian D.

    Project Celeste: The world's first-ever pulse jet powered VTOL, pushing the boundaries of rocketry and autonomous propulsion systems.

    $1,000
  • Tambe T.

    Cloning and Co-expression of Holin and Endolysin Genes from Salmonella Typhi Phages for Controlled Bacterial Lysis and Antibacterial Activity

    $750
  • Santiago D.

    Engineering a motorized exoskeleton from my dorm room to enhance human strength and endurance.

    $1,000
  • Tokdima Gershinen Y.

    Studying the genetic diversity of cryptococcus species complex in plateau State Nigeria.

    $500
  • Krish S.

    Hair clippers that can autonomously give you a haircut in minutes

    $700
  • Jayant R.

    Building an automated Speech & Language Pathologist (SLP) to enable people with speech/language impairments to get help without going bankrupt.

    $250
  • Aaryan H.

    I'm building the world's largest database of viruses (phagebase.com)

    $100
  • Richa P.

    An open-source wearable to help people with severe motor disorders (like ALS, cerebral palsy, locked-in syndrome) communicate using just their tongue movements.

    $1,000
  • Kevin G.

    Four volleyball-obsessed engineering students build the world’s first setter robot, delivering volleyballs perfectly every time.

    $600
  • Rashi B.

    Natural defense, clean air, with BugBeGone, mosquitoes beware. (Vive la révolution!)

    $1,000
  • Brian L.

    Autonomous Drone-based inspection of Power Line Infrastructure

    $500
  • Aarav S.

    Cognitive Neuroscience for Brain-Controlled Prosthetics

    $900
  • Sam W.

    A group buy platform for essential medication in Kenya.

    $700
  • Jackson Y.

    Low cost micro weather stations for improved wildfire weather prediction

    $700
  • Ryan M.

    A 6-axis robotic arm to help those with degenerative disabilities with fine motor tasks.

    $1,000
  • Sinem Ü.

    Revolutionizing reading for dyslexic individuals with AR glasses that dynamically adapt text in real-time based on user preferences, enhancing fluency for a personalized and seamless reading experience

    $525
  • Arthur B.

    A custom, affordable EEG system

    $800
  • Vivek K.

    Counting calories intake 10x more accurately with novel wrist worn sensor technology.

    $999
  • Kenneth S.

    Headband Device to Monitor Glymphatic System

    $700
  • Hector Alberto D.

    No-code platform for governments, universities, and individuals to train, deploy, and commercialize neural machine translation models for digitally disadvantaged languages.

    $100

From the workbenches we funded

A funded Solo Grants build
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A thousand bucks or less became

3 new viruses discovered and named.

Wildfire prediction deployed across California and Texas.

$10M raised to bring ML to chip design.

FAQ

One person building a real thing. Hardware, software, research, a creative project, it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t have to become a business. Most of the time it isn’t one. It’s open to anyone, any age, anywhere in the world, and it’s especially for people who can’t easily cover the cost of the build themselves. We take real life into account: work status, dependents, what you have coming in.

Start what you can’t stop thinking about.

If a few hundred dollars is the only thing between you and the first working version, that’s exactly the gap we’re here to close. On average, about ten days from application to funded.

Apply for a grant →See who we funded

No equity · ~10 days to funded

Commercializing already? Apply to Solo Founders →

Not a builder? Fund one →