Grants & Programmes

Multiple funded pathways exist for builders across the Livepeer ecosystem. Grants, accelerator programmes, hackathons, and hacker cohorts are run through Livepeer Foundation initiatives, treasury-funded Special Purpose Entities (SPEs), and community partnerships with organisations like Encode Club. All grant programme applications are managed through livepeer.org/dev-hub, the primary application entry point.

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Active Developer SPEs

Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) are treasury-funded bodies approved by LPT governance to build specific infrastructure or developer tooling on the Livepeer network. Three SPEs are currently active and directly relevant to developers building AI applications. What is an SPE? An SPE receives a fixed LPT allocation from the Livepeer treasury, operates with a defined mandate, and reports progress publicly. SPE work is open-source and directly extends the developer surface of the network.

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Grant Types

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AI Video Startup Programme

Selected teams receive:

• Grant funding of up to $20,000
• Infrastructure credits for AI inference and transcoding
• Technical mentorship from the Livepeer engineering team
• Early access to new AI video infrastructure and pipelines
• Co-marketing and partnership activation opportunities
• Investor networking and showcase opportunities

The first cohort (August to October 2024) included eight startups: Flipguard, Katana, Newcoin, Operator, Origin Stories, Refraction, Supermodel, and StreamEth. Teams incorporated generative AI features — text-to-image, image-to-image, image-to-video, upscaling, and speech-to-text — using existing Livepeer pipelines or building their own. A parallel programme run in partnership with Encode Club offers an eight-week accelerator for past Encode programme participants, with weekly workshops, one-on-one sessions, and support for technical development, design, and fundraising.

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ComfyUI Live Video Hacker Programme

The ComfyUI Live Video Hacker Programme brings together developers, creators, and AI engineers to build real-time AI video workflows using ComfyUI and ComfyStream on the Livepeer network. Participants join a cohort to create and publish innovative live video AI pipelines. Grants go to contributors who open-source their workflow and publish a write-up. Additional incentives exist for more extensive contributions. What participants use:

• ComfyStream — an open-source ComfyUI custom node for running real-time media workflows
• ComfyStream Docs — setup, deployment, and model guides
• Livepeer network for GPU-backed real-time AI inference

The first cohort ran in January 2025 with a demo day on 31 January 2025. A second cohort opened shortly after.

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Real-Time Video AI Bootcamp

Launched in February 2025 in partnership with Encode Club, the Real-Time Video AI Bootcamp is a developer-focused educational programme combining technical workshops, hands-on project development, and incentivised challenges to accelerate adoption of real-time AI video processing. Participants explore workflow orchestration using Livepeer’s Pipelines product, gain experience with GPU-backed inference, and build interactive applications on the network’s decentralised infrastructure.

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Hackathons

Livepeer hosts and co-sponsors hackathons to generate new ideas, attract builders, and seed projects that may continue as grant recipients or SPE proposals.

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Livepeer Summit Hackathon

The Livepeer Summit brings together core contributors, builders, and ecosystem stakeholders for two days of strategy and hacking. Participants work on governance, growth, network design, Daydream, Gateway infrastructure, or any new direction for the ecosystem. Outputs range from quick experiments and prototypes to governance proposals. Past Summit participants have included protocol engineers, workflow owners, orchestrators, and community builders. Learn more about the Livepeer Summit

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Encode Club Hackathons

Encode Club runs AI video-focused hackathons where participants build on Livepeer’s infrastructure. Winners are often invited into the accelerator programme for continued development. Encode Club Programmes

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How to Apply

All grant and programme applications go through the Livepeer Dev Hub. Currently open calls are listed there, with application forms and programme details linked from each listing.