New initiative will support hundreds of creators across Film, Fashion, Art and Music and bring on strategic partners to expand the fund's reach and impact
NEW YORK, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Kickstarter today announced the launch of the Kickstarter Culture Fund, a $1 million fund supporting independent creators working across Art, Fashion, Film and Music. The fund is the first to be financed entirely by Kickstarter and is open to creators around the world.
The Kickstarter Culture Fund is a key expression of the company's recently launched Power of Belief brand campaign—an effort centered on the idea that belief is what sparks new ideas, and that those ideas come to life when people believe in each other. The Culture Fund puts Kickstarter's own belief into action: belief in creative independence, belief in the importance of helping more creators bring more ideas into the world, and belief in the power of community to make those ideas possible. Through the fund, Kickstarter will provide direct financial contributions to live campaigns from independent creators using its platform, helping them build momentum during the critical period when they are working to rally support for their ideas.
Creators doing work within the fund's four core categories can apply for the fund when their Kickstarter campaign is live or when they have a project page in draft.
Creators can learn more about eligibility and apply through the Kickstarter Culture Fund at https://landing.kickstarter.com/culture-fund.
Everette Taylor, Chief Executive Officer at Kickstarter said, "Creators across all industries – especially artists, musicians, filmmakers, and designers – are facing increasing challenges finding the resources and support they need to bring their ideas to life. The Kickstarter Culture Fund is our commitment to addressing that problem because when fewer ideas have the opportunity to break through, culture, the economy, and society all suffer. By putting resources directly behind creators, we're helping more ambitious ideas find the support they need to become reality. This is just the beginning."
Courtney Brown Warren, Kickstarter's Chief Marketing Officer, added, "The Kickstarter Culture Fund is a meaningful expansion of the ways we have historically supported creators on their journey. This time, we're reaching into our own pockets to provide additional resources to creators at a critical moment when it feels harder than ever to bring a creative idea to life. We believe every creator deserves the opportunity to share their ideas with the world, and the Culture Fund gives us another way to help make that possible."
Kickstarter will expand the impact of the Culture Fund through partnerships with organizations that share its commitment to supporting independent creators. Through these partnerships, organizations will contribute dedicated funding to the Culture Fund, helping to reach more creators, creative disciplines, and communities around the world.
The first partner under the Culture Fund umbrella is Creative Scotland, the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland. Creative Scotland will be expanding its 2023 Kickstarter fund to provide renewed support for Scotland-based creators. The Creative Scotland Forward Fund will contribute £67,500 directly to eligible Kickstarter campaigns across film, comics, music, radio and podcasts, games, publishing, and design.
To be eligible, creators must be based in Scotland and have a live Kickstarter campaign in one of the fund's eligible categories. Projects must demonstrate a clear connection to Scotland, with primary creative activity and beneficiaries based in the country. Find more details about the Creative Scotland fund here.
Additional partners will launch dedicated funding initiatives under the Kickstarter Culture Fund umbrella in the coming months.
Learn more about the Kickstarter Culture Fund here.
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Kickstarter Launches $1 Million Culture Fund to Back Independent Creators Around the World
- 12-session virtual event explores AI inference, agentic AI, cloud storage, and data management for production AI deployments
- 38 industry experts from 21 leading technology companies including AMD, DDN, Hammerspace, IBM, Intel, KIOXIA, MinIO, Nutanix, Scality, Solidigm, VAST Data, Western Digital, Crusoe, Iron Mountain and others, share practical guidance for scalable, cost-efficient AI infrastructure
- Presented with theCUBE, the summit runs August 11 through September 3 and is available live and on demand
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Enterprise, Storage, and 5G/Edge featuring Data Center Building Block Solutions® (DCBBS), today announced the seventh annual Supermicro Open Storage Summit, a virtual event presented with theCUBE that will run from August 11 through September 3. The 12-session technical series brings together leading experts across the AI storage ecosystem to examine the data infrastructure required to deploy enterprise AI at scale.
Check out the video overview here, and the event page for the full agenda and to register.
"Enterprise AI success depends on a data infrastructure that can scale with growing model complexity and inference demands," said Michael McNerney, senior vice president, Marketing and Network Security Supermicro. "The Open Storage Summit brings together industry leaders from across our ecosystem to share practical expertise on building high-performance, cost-efficient AI infrastructure. Combined with Supermicro's DCBBS architecture, these insights help organizations accelerate AI deployment from pilot projects to production at scale."
"Enterprise AI is forcing organizations to rethink infrastructure from the data outward," said Rob Strechay, Principal Analyst at theCUBE. "As enterprises look to become token producers rather than perpetual token consumers, storage becomes a strategic platform, not simply for capacity, but for feeding GPUs, managing context, accelerating inference, and enabling trusted AI at scale. That's why the conversations happening at the Open Storage Summit are so important."
The summit will explore AI inference, agentic AI, hybrid cloud storage, AI data platforms, context memory, unstructured data management, neocloud infrastructure, and cloud storage services. Industry leaders from Supermicro and ecosystem partners—including AMD, DDN, Hammerspace, IBM, Intel, KIOXIA, MinIO, Nutanix, Scality, Solidigm, VAST Data, Western Digital, and others—will share practical recommendations for designing high-performance, cost-efficient AI environments. Practitioners from Crusoe and Iron Mountain will also discuss real-world AI and cloud storage deployments.
DCBBS delivers complete, modular AI infrastructure built from validated components and subsystems, enabling flexible deployment from individual servers and networking to full rack-scale and data center-level solutions, including software and services. For additional information on Supermicro storage products, click here.
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro's motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Asia, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.
All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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Supermicro's Seventh Annual Open Storage Summit Brings Together 21 Ecosystem Partners to Share Practical Guidance on Deploying Enterprise AI at Scale
