The NLnet foundation managed to get some European Union grants to fund work on privacy and trust technologies.
It's then up to individuals to apply to it, and to define tasks that can improve privacy and trust on the Internet, which then the NLnet foundation can choose to fund.
This could for instance be used to fund the advancement of software (Tor, Replicant, etc) and hardware freedom (RISC-V, etc).
The only requirement (beside improving privacy and trust) seem to be that the project needs to have an European Union component (like the people applying for the grant living in the European union, etc).
They are then paid once tasks defined and/or the deliverables mentioned in the task have been completed.
The NLnet foundation also have some resources to help pushing changes upstream and try to push the applicants into making their work as useful as possible by engaging with upstream communities.
References:The application criteria wrere handled by the NLnet foundation.
There is a thread about funding on the mailing list about that
This consists in porting Replicant to Android 9 while using a kernel closely based on upstream Linux.
The graphics part is covered by another tasks also being funded.
Status: PortingToAndroid9