From what I can tell, the field have been funding constrained since the FTX collapse.
What I think happened: FTX had lots of money and a low bar for funding, which meant they spread a lot of money around. This meant that more project got started, and probably even more people got generally encouraged to join. Probably some project got funded that should not have been, but probably also some really good projects got started that did not get money before because not clearing the bar before due to not having the right connections, or just bad att writing grant proposals. In short FTX money and the promise of FTX money made the field grow quickly. Also there where where also some normal field growth. AIS has been growing steadily for a while.
Then FTX imploded. There where lots of chaos. Grants where promised but never paid out. Some orgs don’t what to spend the money they did get from FTX because of risk of clawback risks. Other grant makers cover some of this but not all of this. It’s still unclear what the new funding situation is.
Some months later, SFF, FTX and Nonlinear Network have their various grant rounds. Each of them get overwhelmed with applications. I think this is mainly from the FTX induced growth spurt, but also partly orgs still trying to recover from loss of FTX money, and just regular growth. Either way, the outcome of these grant rounds make it clear that the funding situation has changed. The bar for getting funding is higher than before.
From what I can tell, the field have been funding constrained since the FTX collapse.
What I think happened:
FTX had lots of money and a low bar for funding, which meant they spread a lot of money around. This meant that more project got started, and probably even more people got generally encouraged to join. Probably some project got funded that should not have been, but probably also some really good projects got started that did not get money before because not clearing the bar before due to not having the right connections, or just bad att writing grant proposals. In short FTX money and the promise of FTX money made the field grow quickly. Also there where where also some normal field growth. AIS has been growing steadily for a while.
Then FTX imploded. There where lots of chaos. Grants where promised but never paid out. Some orgs don’t what to spend the money they did get from FTX because of risk of clawback risks. Other grant makers cover some of this but not all of this. It’s still unclear what the new funding situation is.
Some months later, SFF, FTX and Nonlinear Network have their various grant rounds. Each of them get overwhelmed with applications. I think this is mainly from the FTX induced growth spurt, but also partly orgs still trying to recover from loss of FTX money, and just regular growth. Either way, the outcome of these grant rounds make it clear that the funding situation has changed. The bar for getting funding is higher than before.