Merge pull request #20 from OpenVoiceOS/ngi

ngi

Author: j1nx

_posts/2025-10-20-ngi.md

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+---
+title: "OpenVoiceOS Receives NGI Zero Commons Fund Grant"
+excerpt: "We’re excited to share some fantastic news — OpenVoiceOS has been selected to receive a grant from the NGI Zero Commons Fund!"
+coverImage: "/assets/blog/ngi/thumb.png"
+date: "2025-10-20T00:00:00.000Z"
+author:
+  name: Peter Steenbergen
+  picture: "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/641281"
+ogImage:
+  url: "/assets/blog/ngi/thumb.png"
+---
+
+# OpenVoiceOS Receives NGI Zero Commons Fund Grant
+
+We’re excited to share some fantastic news — **OpenVoiceOS (OVOS)** has been selected to receive a grant from the [**NGI Zero Commons Fund**](https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero-commons-fund/)!
+
+This milestone represents a huge step forward for our mission to build an open, community-driven, and **privacy-first** voice assistant platform. With this support, we can accelerate our progress from beta to a first stable version under our OpenVoiceOS umbrella.
+
+---
+
+## What is OpenVoiceOS?
+
+**OVOS** is Europe’s open-source alternative to proprietary voice assistants.
+Built around transparency, modularity, and user freedom, OVOS lets you choose every component of your assistant — from **wake word** and **speech recognition** to **text-to-speech**, **intent handling**, and **AI conversation modules** — all while keeping full control over your data.
+
+You can run OVOS **entirely offline**, **on-premises**, or **in the cloud**, making it suitable for:
+
+- Smart homes and IoT devices
+- Accessibility and assistive technologies
+- Industrial and enterprise applications
+- Research and educational environments
+
+---
+
+## What the Grant Enables
+
+With support from the NGI Zero Commons Fund, we’ll be able to:
+
+- 💼 **Hire our lead developer** to deliver on the first stable roadmap
+- 🧭 **Improve onboarding** and usability for non-technical users
+- 🌍 **Expand language support** and stabilize platform components
+- 📚 **Enhance documentation** for developers building skills and plug-ins
+
+---
+
+## Real-World Impact
+
+OVOS is already making a difference across Europe and beyond.
+It powers projects such as the [**Royal Dutch Visio Voicelab**](https://voicelab.visio.org/), bringing voice interaction to visually impaired users, as well as conversational assistants in [**nursing homes**](https://khoshnazdesign.com/Fritzi/), [**manufacturing**](https://coala-ai.de/), and/ or [**multilingual AI initiatives**](https://proyectoilenia.es/recursos-modelos-datasets/).
+
+This grant helps us strengthen that ecosystem — empowering developers, researchers, and users to shape the future of open, ethical voice technology.
+
+---
+
+## Thank You ❤️
+
+We want to express our gratitude to the [**NGI Zero Commons Fund**](https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero-commons-fund/), [**NLnet Foundation**](https://nlnet.nl/), and our incredible community of **contributors**, **volunteers**, and **users**.
+Your support makes it possible to keep building a voice assistant platform that prioritizes **freedom**, **transparency**, and **privacy**.
+
+Together, we’re proving that open voice technology can be **trustworthy**, **user-owned**, and **truly free**.
+
+Stay tuned for more updates as we move toward our full **first stable release**!
+
+🔗 [NLnet Announcement](https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20251016-selection-NGI0CommonsFund.html)
+🔗 [NGI Zero Commons Fund](https://nlnet.nl/commonsfund/)
+🔗 [OpenVoiceOS Project Page](https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenVoiceOS/)
+
+---
+
+## Help Us Build Voice for Everyone 
+
+If you believe that voice assistants should be open, inclusive, and user-controlled, we invite you to support OVOS: 
+
+- **💸 Donate**: Your contributions help us pay for infrastructure, development, and legal protections. 
+
+- **📣 Contribute Open Data**: Speech models need diverse, high-quality data. If you can share voice samples, transcripts, or datasets under open licenses, let's collaborate. 
+
+- **🌍 Help Translate**: OVOS is global by nature. Translators make our platform accessible to more communities every day. 
+
+We're not building this for profit. We're building it for people. And with your help, we can ensure open voice has a future—transparent, private, and community-owned. 
+
+👉 [Support the project here](https://www.openvoiceos.org/contribution)