Announcing a Multi-foundation $6.5M Commitment to Ensure Performing Artists are at the Center of Technology Innovation

Doris Duke Foundation and Mozilla Foundation Announce $6.5M Commitment to Ensure Performing Artists are at the Center of Technology Innovation

Artists Make Technology – which will be structured around three core pillars – will create pathways to center performing artists in technological innovation by providing support, resources, and collaboration opportunities

January 7, 2026 - NEW YORK – Today, the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF), in partnership with Mozilla Foundation, announced an eight-figure investment in the fields of arts and technology, Artists Make Technology (AMT). This new program will center the foundation’s work in the performing arts space.

AMT is the first initiative to build a comprehensive, cross-sector infrastructure that empowers performing artists not just to respond to technological change, but to also be in the driver's seat creating it. By tackling systemic, long-standing barriers including limited direct funding, siloed sectors, economic and geographic barriers to access, weak policy pathways, and a lack of collaboration between art and tech, AMT is creating an integrated, multi-tiered system of support that links artistic practice to tech-sector innovation.

The initiative includes three interconnected pillars totaling $11M: direct artist support, infrastructure building, and continued knowledge building. The Mozilla Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation and the Ford Foundation have already committed $6.5M and will continue seeking partnership toward the larger three year goal.

“Artists are typically excluded from technology development which often results in threats to artists’ data sovereignty, compensation, representation, and livelihood. At the same time, technology companies miss out on the creative and embodied insights artists offer,” said Ashley Ferro-Murray, PhD, program director for the arts at DDF. “Artists Make Technology hopes to build a future where performing artists are not just responding to technological change, but actively shaping the tools, policies, and cultural frameworks that define our ever-changing digital era. The aim is to do so from a place of artmaking, allowing the impacts intrinsic to creative exploration to flourish. AMT will enable our field to take a historic step: from adapting to technological change to leading it.”

Part of AMT is a $6M investment in DDF’s second iteration of the Artists Make Technology Lab (formerly known as the Performing Arts Technologies Lab). This funding will provide up to 40 grants and hands-on technical support to performing artists and technologists, fueling new creative experiments and applied technological research led by the arts with the goal of fostering conditions for experimental, artist-led digital practices to thrive. Further details on the AMT Lab and its open-call Request for Proposals can be found here, with applications opening February 2.

An additional $4M commitment will provide support for infrastructure building through AMT Pathways – an opportunity for artists to work with Mozilla engineers to ensure that artists have the legal, technical, and institutional tools and knowledge to creatively work with technology and embed their creativity into the heart of technology development. Potential programs for pathways include Responsible Computing Challenge, Mozilla Common Voice, and campaigns on net neutrality. Pathways will be bespoke and project-specific in nature.

The remaining $1M will fund knowledge building through AMT Assemblies that will convene artists, technologists, and funders to co-develop shared values, frameworks, and language, strengthening the field’s collective capacity to steer technology toward the public interest.

“Mozilla Foundation’s work at the intersection of creativity and technology has shown us that artists want technology to expand their imagination, not replace it,” said Nabiha Syed, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation. “When creatives are left out of the technology conversation creative output suffers, stripping away the struggle and discovery that gives art depth. Through Artists Make Tech, we are excited to support artists, creatives, and technologists in working together to imagine a multidisciplinary future of creativity.”

“Technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. If artists are not intentionally being brought into the fold, they will be left behind,” said Sam Gill, president and CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation. “At the Doris Duke Foundation, we’re determined to use technology to deepen, not flatten, culture, and through our new Artists Make Technology initiative, both artists and technologists alike will understand that tech is something they can not only embrace, but also actively shape the future of.”

Together, these three intertwined pillars will create a robust and replicable model for artist-led technological development to address the long-standing gap between artists and the design of the very technologies that reshape their livelihoods.

This announcement comes as DDF has increased their giving and vision for a more synergistic relationship between the performing arts and technology.

About The Doris Duke Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) is to build a more creative, equitable and sustainable future. The foundation works across three areas: Arts & Culture; Nature; and Health & Well-being. DDF focuses its support to the performing arts on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. The Doris Duke Foundation is one of only two foundations in history to have received the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, presented by President Barack Obama, in special recognition of DDF's support of creative expression across the United States and bold commitment to artistic risk, helping artists, musicians, dancers and actors share their talents and enrich the cultural life of the nation. Visit www.dorisduke.org to learn more.

About Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla Foundation is a global nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, inclusive, and equitable. Founded in 2003, it supports people-first technology through funding, advocacy, education, and research.

Rooted in the open-source movement and guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla Foundation focuses on critical issue areas like ethical data practices, healthy digital ecosystems, and shifting digital power toward individuals and communities. Its work connects technologists, researchers, policymakers, and activists to reimagine and rebuild systems to serve the public good.

With over two decades of global impact, Mozilla Foundation continues to lead the movement for a better technology future—powered by people, and open by design. Learn more at mozillafoundation.org.