The Sovereign Tech Fund: part of the new Sovereign Tech Agency

With over 23.5€ million invested in over 60 technologies through the Sovereign Tech Fund, additional programs like Sovereign Tech Resilience (formerly Bug Resilience), Sovereign Tech Fellowship for maintainers, and Sovereign Tech Challenges, the new Sovereign Tech Agency is an organizational home that reflects the many ways we’ve developed to support the open source ecosystem. The Sovereign Tech Agency’s mission will sound familiar, because it hasn’t changed: to sustainably strengthen the open source ecosystem with a focus on security, resilience, technological diversity, and the people behind the code.

At the end of 2023, we announced that the Sovereign Tech Fund was on its way to becoming a permanent and independent organization. The journey of creating a legal entity (a subsidiary of SPRIND, the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation) helped us realize that “fund” doesn’t encompass everything that we’re doing.

The Sovereign Tech Fund isn’t going away: it is our primary program to commission work on the foundational, open software components, and will be a mainstay of the Sovereign Tech Agency’s activities. Since March 2023, over 500 submissions have been made, proposing over 114€ million in potential work on FOSS projects. This demonstrates both the size of the open source ecosystem and the depth of the need.

Just as important are the new programs we’ve been building up:

• Sovereign Tech Resilience is improving how FOSS projects we all depend on can better manage vulnerabilities, reducing the risk of harboring bugs, and increase capacity to respond to issues and weaknesses.
• The Sovereign Tech Fellowship for maintainers centers the people creating and caring for the software we all rely on. Despite the success of the open source ecosystem, the daily work of these maintainers often goes unnoticed or under-compensated, putting the long-term sustainability of these technologies at risk.
• The Sovereign Tech Challenge looks for new ways to solve thorny problems in the open source ecosystem, welcoming proposals and ideas from all around the world. In the first iteration, we asked organizations to contribute back to free and open source software they already use in three areas: developer tooling, documentation, and securing software production.

The Sovereign Tech Agency is a home for all these programs, and more in the future. The agency is focusing on the digital infrastructure, public interest technology, and the shared digital commons. As an organization, we’ll keep working to keep these topics on the agenda, while also providing a blueprint for countries around the world to do the same. The Sovereign Tech Agency isn’t about going our own way — we’ve always extended a hand to potential collaborators and partners, and called for more attention to the importance of the building blocks of our modern economy and society.

The Sovereign Tech Agency is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) and a subsidiary of SPRIND, the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation. Our work would not be possible without the support and vision of these partners. BMWK’s partnership underscores the commitment to securing and strengthening digital infrastructure for the public good. Fostering robust open source ecosystem strengthens the technologies needed for economic growth, as well as innovation in the public and private sectors.

We are also grateful to SPRIND, whose backing has been there from the start. We have been able to grow and operate dynamically with their support. As a SPRIND subsidiary, we look forward to continued collaboration as we expand our reach and impact as the Sovereign Tech Agency.

We very much appreciate all the maintainers and contributors out there, working often without recognition or financial compensation. The communities and individuals creating and maintaining open source technologies are doing so much critical work that keeps our world working.

In particular, we’d like to thank the people working on the technologies that we’ve had the fortune and pleasure of partnering with over the last two years. Without their trust, collaboration, and engagement, the work of the Sovereign Tech Fund and the new Sovereign Tech Agency wouldn’t be possible.

If you have an ongoing contract, nothing is changing. The agreements, points of contact, and contracts remain the same. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your program manager.

Click here for our official press statement.