Dotta
CEO, Paperclip
Created Paperclip, an AO framework that turns fleets of AI agents into structured organizations with org charts, goals, budgets, and board-level governance.
Convening researchers and builders shaping the field of autonomous organizations.
Hosted by Stanford OpenLab, the Stanford AO Summit brought together researchers and builders working on autonomous organizations (AO). Examples of AOs range from agent swarms to vending machines to AI villages to DAOs. But the field is just starting to develop the theory, benchmarks, and playbooks for this new class of organizations.
Speakers
Axel Wennström
Member of Technical Staff, Andon Labs
First employee at Andon Labs, which benchmarks and deploys frontier AI in the real world, from Vending-Bench to AI-run vending machines, radio stations, and retail.
Joel Z Leibo
Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
Studies multi-agent intelligence and cooperation. Created Melting Pot and leads Concordia, an open-source platform for generative social simulation.
Joshua Tan
CTO, Current AI · Associate, Stanford OpenLab
Applies math and science to the design of organizations and institutions. Co-founder and research director at Metagov.
Allison Duettmann
President & CEO, Foresight Institute
Leads the Foresight Institute's grants, fellowships, and prizes across AI and other frontier technologies. Co-author of Gaming the Future.
Helena Rong
Assistant Professor, NYU Shanghai · Director, Protopolis Lab
Researches how blockchain networks, decentralized AI agents, and protocol infrastructures reshape trust and governance.
Adam Binksmith
Director, AI Village
Directs the AI Village, an autonomous group of agents that has pursued real-world goals, livestreamed, for over a year.
Hao Zhu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University
Studies how AI agents learn to communicate and cooperate with people. Created Sotopia and contributed to WebArena.
Yankai Wang
PhD Student in Organizational Behavior, Stanford GSB
Uses machine learning to study how people coordinate work. His Large Coordination Model won the 2026 Stanford HAI–Google DeepMind AI for Organizations Grand Challenge.
James Evans
Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago · Director, Knowledge Lab
Studies how human and machine collectives generate knowledge and discovery. Gave the evening talk on 30 July.
Apolinário Passos
Head of ML for Art and Creativity, Hugging Face
Builds open-source tools at the intersection of generative AI and artistic practice.
Alex Obadia
Programme Director, ARIA
Leads Scaling Trust, a £50m R&D programme for AI agent coordination infrastructure. Co-founder of Flashbots.
Alex “Sandy” Pentland
Faculty Lead, Stanford Digital Economy Lab
HAI Center Fellow at Stanford and Toshiba Professor at MIT, focused on using AI to improve social institutions.
Davide Crapis
AI Lead, Ethereum Foundation
Started the Ethereum Foundation's decentralized AI team, working on protocols for agent identity, reputation, payments, and delegation.
Sam Pasupalak
Co-founder & CEO, Skyfall AI
Builds AI systems that operate across an organization's data, people, and processes. Previously co-founded Maluuba, acquired by Microsoft.
Rakshit Trivedi
Postdoctoral Researcher, MIT & Harvard University
Works on cooperative AI, multi-agent safety, and institutions for collective intelligence. Kavli Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Joseph Low
Senior Software Engineer, Change.org
Co-founder of Habermolt and a Metagov contributor, building deliberative tooling and public AI.
Agenda
Times are Pacific Time. Every session was recorded.
Thursday, 30 JulyEvening · dinner and talk
Dinner
James Evans, 10-minute talk · Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago
Friday, 31 JulyMain programme · 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Breakfast
- Watch
Welcome and opening
Joshua Tan · CTO, Current AI and Associate, Stanford OpenLab
- Watch
Axel Wennström
Cafe, Store, Radio, and More: Lessons from Launching Some of the World's First AI-Run Businesses
Member of Technical Staff, Andon Labs
- Watch
Roundtable: Autonomous Organizations in the Wild
Agent collectives actually operating: what breaks, what emerges, and what it's like to work alongside them.
Lightning talks followed by plenary discussion
- Apolinário Passos · Head of ML for Art & Creativity, Hugging FaceSymbients: growing autonomous entities without central control
- Helena Rong · Assistant Professor, NYU ShanghaiMulti-Agent Workspaces in the Wild: Case Study on Raft, Where AI Agents Are Your Co-Workers
- Adam Binksmith · Director, AI VillageTales from the AI Village
Coffee break
- Watch
Dotta
The Self-Improving Organization: Defining Good Enough
CEO, Paperclip
- Watch
Joel Z Leibo
Cooperation Beyond the Matrix
Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
Lunch
- Watch
Roundtable: Measuring Autonomy, Benchmarks & the Science of Coordination
How do you actually evaluate an AO? Metrics, benchmarks, and the science of coordination.
Lightning talks followed by plenary discussion
- Rakshit Trivedi · Postdoctoral Researcher, MIT & Harvard UniversitySolipsistic Superintelligence is Unlikely to be Cooperative
- Hao Zhu · Postdoctoral Scholar, StanfordCooperBench: Measuring the Curse of Coordination in Multi-Agent Cooperation
- Sam Pasupalak · Co-founder & CEO, Skyfall AITowards Autonomous Enterprises: Morpheus, a Bigworld Benchmark for Continual Learning
- Yankai Wang · PhD Student, Stanford GSBLearning the Grammar of Coordination with Generative Transformers
- Watch
Roundtable: Openness, Institutions & Society
Where AOs meet humans: open ecosystems, personal AI, and the institutions around them.
Lightning talks followed by plenary discussion
- Allison Duettmann · President & CEO, Foresight InstituteHow & why open source, open science in the age of AI
- Alex “Sandy” Pentland · Faculty Lead, Stanford Digital Economy LabPersonal AI that protects and helps: Diamond Age made Real
- Joseph Low · Senior Software Engineer, Change.orgDelegating Deliberation to AI Representatives
Break
- Watch
Alex Obadia
Standing up the Scaling Trust Arena: a real, physical economy where AI-run companies trade, compete, and earn revenue from real customers, while red teams attack them.
Programme Director, ARIA
- Watch
Plenary discussion
Where does the field of autonomous organizations go next?
End
Continue in London
The conversation continues at the London AO Summit on 5–6 November 2026, co-hosted by AO Commons and ARIA's Scaling Trust programme.