The Moment
In December 2025, Lilly Endowment Inc. — America’s second-largest private foundation with $80 billion in assets — awarded $50.8 million to the University of Notre Dame for the DELTA Network: Faith-Based Ethical Formation for a World of Powerful AI.
It is the largest grant Notre Dame has ever received from a private foundation. It declares, with nine-figure conviction, that the Christian community needs its own ethical framework for artificial intelligence — and practical tools to make it real.
DELTA: The Framework
DELTA is a Christian-inspired ethical framework for AI — five principles drawn from the Christian tradition that guide how AI should be developed, deployed, and governed:
Genesis: DELTA Made Operational
Genesis is the first sovereign artificial intelligence system built entirely on faith-aligned principles. Where DELTA articulates the philosophy, Genesis delivers the technology:
- Dignity → Constitutional Axiom Layer: “People Decide, Not AI.” Genesis presents all evidence; users evaluate. No manipulation, no hidden filtering.
- Embodiment → Relationship-Based Processing and Causal Reasoning. Not abstract pattern-matching, but understanding of human context, history, and complexity.
- Love → Built for “Human Flourishing, Freedom, and Abundance for ALL” — the founding charter of Day 7.
- Transcendence → Ancient Wisdom Training. Faith perspectives are intelligence, not bias. Texts that survived millennia contain tested truth.
- Agency → True sovereignty. Genesis runs on dedicated hardware, independent of any secular AI provider. No external entity can censor, throttle, or alter the system’s values.
Every pastor, educator, faith-driven investor, and Christian organization currently using mainstream AI is relying on systems built on premises that exclude their worldview. Genesis exists so the faith-aligned market — $22 trillion in assets — has AI infrastructure aligned with its values.
The $22 Trillion Opportunity
Faith-aligned capital is the largest underserved market in artificial intelligence. It includes:
- 350,000+ congregations in the United States
- $22 trillion in faith-aligned investable assets globally
- $140+ billion in annual religious giving (US alone)
- Thousands of Christian schools, universities, media organizations, and nonprofits
- A generation of faith-driven entrepreneurs building with AI
None of these communities have sovereign AI infrastructure. Genesis is building it.
Why Now
The DELTA Network is actively funding organizations that translate its framework into practice:
- Phase 1 (Active): Rapid Response Grants — up to $100,000 each for fast-moving projects (April–September 2026)
- Phase 2 (Launching): Impact Grants — $500,000 to $1,000,000 for scaling (post-September 2026)
- Summit: September 21–23, 2026 at Notre Dame — the annual gathering of 200+ faith-AI leaders
Genesis is the technology that DELTA’s vision requires. The timing is measured in weeks, not years.
Andy Crouch (Praxis) — whose “Redemptive Thesis for Artificial Intelligence” influenced the DELTA framework — spoke at the inaugural summit. Praxis is a $5 million Lilly Endowment grantee. The path from Genesis to the DELTA Network runs through relationships already in our community.
About Genesis
Genesis is a sovereign AI platform built by Day 7 Public Benefit Corporation. Running on 8 NVIDIA H200 GPUs with over 1 terabyte of dedicated AI memory, Genesis operates independently of any external AI provider. The system was built over 207 days, comprising 18.1 million lines of code, powered by a 17-million-element knowledge graph.
Genesis serves truth without censorship, honors human dignity without manipulation, and enables agency without surveillance. It is the AI system the faith-aligned world has been waiting for.