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Jupyter Foundation

The Linux Foundation fund that pays for work on Project Jupyter. It controls money, not code: Jupyter’s own elected councils still make every technical decision.

1 projects in this catalogPart of the Linux FoundationWebsite

What it is

The Jupyter Foundation is a directed fund of the Linux Foundation, the LF’s 501(c)(6) trade association; Jupyter’s governance pages say its purpose is “to raise, budget and spend funds in support of Project Jupyter and its mission”. The LF announced it on November 19, 2024 at its Member Summit in Napa, California, with AWS, Bloomberg, Google and Meta as Premier members, Anaconda, Quansight and QuantStack as General members, and MD Anderson Cancer Center as an Associate member. It named the areas the money might go to: engineering, release management, community management, documentation and accessibility, and marketing and events. By October 2026 it had 25 members: seven Premier (AWS, Apple, Bloomberg, Google, Meta, Snowflake and Uber), eight General, among them Databricks, JetBrains and Posit, and ten Associate, mostly universities and research labs such as CERN and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The fund sits beside the project, not above it. Project Jupyter itself is hosted by LF Charities, the LF’s 501(c)(3) charity, which it joined from NumFOCUS in October 2024 and which registers the Jupyter trademarks. Jupyter keeps its own governance: an elected Executive Council is “ultimately responsible for all dimensions of the Project”, and a Software Steering Council, with one elected member from each software subproject, coordinates technical decisions across them. The Executive Council’s members also sit on the foundation’s Governing Board, alongside one representative from each Premier member and one to three for the General members, so the people who run Jupyter help decide how its money is spent.

For someone choosing a technology, the badge says Jupyter has paying corporate backers and a neutral legal home, but not that they steer it. The foundation’s own site says joining “does not grant influence over the technical projects of Project Jupyter”, and an Executive Council member wrote in 2025 that it “doesn’t have any technical or strategic decision-making authority” over Jupyter’s subprojects. There are no maturity stages, and the foundation funds only Project Jupyter: JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook, JupyterHub, the kernels and the rest of the subprojects.

Its projects in this catalog

JupyterOpen sourceProject Jupyter is hosted by LF Charities, which registers its trademarks, and governed by its own elected councils; the Jupyter Foundation funds itThe open notebook standard and its tools: JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook in the browser, a server that runs kernels for dozens of languages, the .ipynb file format and JupyterHub for many users.

In depth

Who decides what#

Four bodies share the work, as described in Jupyter’s governance documents and the foundation’s pages in October 2026.

BodyWhat it isWhat it decides
Executive CouncilElected leaders of Project Jupyter, set up in January 2023 to replace the founder-led modelEverything in the end: software, legal, finance, community and operations, mostly by delegating to the bodies below
Software Steering CouncilOne elected representative from each software subproject’s councilSoftware decisions that affect several subprojects; each subproject runs its own day-to-day work
Jupyter Foundation Governing BoardThe Executive Council, one seat per Premier member and one to three seats for General members; chaired in 2026 by Rus Pandey of AppleThe foundation’s annual budget and changes to its charter
LF CharitiesThe Linux Foundation’s 501(c)(3) charity and Jupyter’s parent organisationHolds the project’s legal identity and registers the Jupyter trademarks
Where it came from2014–2026

Project Jupyter grew out of IPython: the IPython Notebook appeared in 2011, and in 2014 its language-independent parts were spun off as Jupyter. Until 2024 NumFOCUS was its fiscal sponsor, and it was led by Fernando Pérez as benevolent dictator for life alongside a steering council. In January 2023 an elected Executive Council, with Pérez among its first members, and a Software Steering Council replaced that model.

In March 2024 the community was shown a proposal to move to the Linux Foundation, and on June 14, 2024 the Executive Council and the Software Steering Council approved it in a joint vote. The LF announced that LF Charities was hosting Jupyter on October 17, 2024, and Jupyter’s blog described the new Jupyter Foundation as “a vehicle for the project to formally engage with industry partners”. An Executive Council member later wrote that the council had asked the LF to set the fund up. It was formally launched on November 19, 2024 with eight members.

Membership has since roughly tripled. Apple, Snowflake and Uber joined as Premier members and Databricks, JetBrains and Posit as General members, and in 2026 Apple held the board’s chair and treasurer posts.

Why it’s built this way

A fund beside the project, not a new home for it
Jupyter already had elected councils that make technical decisions. Putting the money in a separate LF fund let companies pay for engineering and events without being able to buy influence over the code.
Seat the Executive Council on the board
The project’s own leaders sit with the paying members, so they can tell the board what Jupyter needs and the budget follows the project’s priorities.
Leave NumFOCUS for LF Charities
Jupyter’s leaders said the move would help sustain the project’s growth. LF Charities also offered a ready-made way to run a members’ fund next to the project.

Timeline

  1. 2014

    Project Jupyter is spun off from IPython

  2. 2023

    An elected Executive Council and a Software Steering Council replace the founder-led model in January

  3. 2024

    Councils vote to move to the Linux Foundation on June 14; LF Charities hosts Jupyter from October; Jupyter Foundation launched November 19

  4. 2026

    25 members, seven of them Premier; Apple chairs the Governing Board

Sources · facts checked 2026-10-28

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