About
A research commons for autonomous organizations
AO Commons is an independent research and incubation initiative building the shared infrastructure to develop and study autonomous organizations. We are fiscally sponsored by Metagov, a US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit with a mission to cultivate tools, practices and communities that enable self-governance in the digital age. We bring together researchers, builders, and institutions to establish common research methods, evaluation tools, and an open evidence base.
Roadmap
- Before July 2026
Early explorations
Research, conversations and first experiments on autonomous organizations across DAOstar and its network.
- July 2026
30–31 July 2026 · Stanford, CA
Stanford AO Summit
Researchers and builders shaping the field of autonomous organizations, hosted by Stanford OpenLab.
Watch the recordings
- NowNovember 2026
DAOstar becomes AO Commons
After five years building shared infrastructure for DAOs, DAOstar is becoming AO Commons: a nonprofit research initiative advancing the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of autonomous organizations.
Read the announcement -
5–6 November 2026 · London, UK
London AO Summit
A working summit on the theory, benchmarks, infrastructure, and practical playbooks for autonomous organizations, co-hosted with ARIA's Scaling Trust programme.
Register to attend
- Next
Upcoming paper: Open Problems in Autonomous Organizations
Written by the core team and the founding research council. It sets the foundation for the field: what autonomous organizations are, the open problems in developing, studying and governing them, and the initial input to our research agenda.
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Fellowship program
A distributed fellowship pairing researchers and builders to develop, deploy, and study autonomous organizations through real-world experimentation.
Team
AO Commons is supported by a distributed network of researchers, builders, and institutional partners. The core team oversees strategy and programs, and the Research Council provides independent scientific guidance to evaluate research and set the research agenda.
Leadership and core team
Sam McCarthy
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Anke Liu
Co-Founder & Program Director
Rakshit S. Trivedi
Research Director
Founding Research Council
Joshua Tan
CTO at Current AI, lead of Stanford AO at Stanford OpenLab, and co-founder of Metagov.
Helena Rong
Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Business at NYU Shanghai; Director of Protopolis Lab.
James A. Evans
Max Palevsky Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago; Director of Knowledge Lab; External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Joel Z. Leibo
Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind; Visiting Professor at King's College London.