Astera Institute operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit that funds and runs high-impact fundamental scientific challenges, with a life sciences research division providing centralized operational and financial support for Neuro-AI, science, and strategic investments. It leads a residency program supporting dozens of projects tackling structural problems in science and technology, producing fully open and non-proprietary outputs such as infrastructure, tools, datasets, playbooks, and standards. The Neuro-AI division conducts directed neuroscience and AI research to understand biological intelligence for engineering safe general intelligence systems, focusing on problems like agent learning from experience, reward association in stochastic environments, and structures for advanced reasoning. It maintains its headquarters in Emeryville. The organization leverages a $2.5 billion endowment to scale these efforts.