How to join the lab.
alphabell does not have a centralized hiring pipeline. Contributors join by being onboarded into a cell. The path is bidirectional — you find a cell whose work you want to be part of, and the cell decides whether to onboard you. There is no central application form, but there is a structured way to start. For roles posted with a specific cell and salary band, see /careers.
If you already know which cell you want to work with
Contact the cell directly. Cell stewards are listed alongside cells at /node-cells/active. A short note describing what you'd contribute, what you'd like to learn, and a portfolio or set of writing samples is enough to start. Cells take onboarding seriously — a serious response often takes two to four weeks. We try to acknowledge receipt within a week.
If a cell agrees to onboard you, the next step is a signed contributor record and a charter signature. You're a contributor from that point; vote-of-record accrues at 24 months.
If you don't know which cell, but you know which axis
The axis stewards run cross-axis review pools and tend to know which cells have capacity to onboard new contributors. Contact the relevant axis steward (listed at /people) with a short note. The steward will route you to a cell or — if it's the right time of year — to the next contributor cohort.
If you'd like to start with a cohort
We run contributor cohorts twice a year — once in Colombo, once in the Bay Area. A cohort is a 14-week structured onboarding program: pair-programming on cell tooling, an introduction to the substrate, a project rotation across two adjacent cells, and a written response to the charter. Cohorts are small (~12 contributors) and competitive — we typically receive 8–10x as many applications as we have spots.
Cohort applications open about 4 months before the cohort starts. The 2026-Q1 cohort (Colombo) is open now; the 2026-Q3 cohort (Bay Area) opens in early 2026-Q2. See /news for the call-for-applications announcement.
If you'd like to commit compute
Operators committing GPU or TPU capacity to the federated pool are reviewed under the same governance route as funders: a signed proposal, a counterparty due-diligence step, and a long-tenured-contributor quorum vote. The terms — interconnect, audit, isolated-enclave compliance for RSI work — are documented in the standard interconnect agreement template. Contact compute@alphabell.com with a one-page description of what you'd commit.
If you'd like to fund the lab
Funders are reviewed under /funding. The lab does not raise venture capital and does not issue equity. Funding goes through the philanthropic-grant or sovereign-research-partnership route, both of which require explicit approval and counterparty terms that preserve research independence. funding@alphabell.com is the right address.
If you're a journalist or researcher writing about the lab
See /press for the press contact, recent coverage references, and a downloadable lab summary.
What we are not looking for
- Contributors looking for short-horizon project work. The lab's cadence is months-to-years, not days-to-weeks. Cells turn down many strong candidates whose proposed contribution would not survive the cell's review pool for the time the cell expects to spend on the work.
- Contributors looking for credit-by-affiliation. alphabell does not co-author papers with contributors who have not done the work. Cells are explicit about authorship; if you are not in the authorship list of the cell-published report, you did not co-author it.
- Funders who require scope-of-research conditions, equity, or branded co-marketing. We have declined these on multiple occasions and will continue to.
- Compute operators who cannot honour the enclave clause for RSI-axis work or who require terms that conflict with our publication policy.
The general contact
If none of the above fits — for example, you're not sure where you'd contribute but would like to start a conversation — use hello@alphabell.com. We reply individually, in order of receipt, usually within two weeks.