San Francisco
Two days of keynotes, debates, hands-on workshops, and live funding experiments with 200 founders, researchers, funders, and policymakers, in a community that keeps working all year.
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In the age of transformative AI, we need shared infrastructure for human welfare and agency. AI is making a new generation of fortunes, and nobody has settled what they should fund or who gets to decide.
Right now those decisions are being made by a very small circle. Economists and engineers rarely share a conversation, and neither do constitutional lawyers and the teams training the models, or funders and the people who will live with the results. There is still time to widen the circle and put sovereignty, governance, and agency on one table, with the people building the systems and the people funding them.
This March we'll spend two days doing that in focused sessions and open debate, some of it off the record, to start lasting collaborations and research.
Transformative AI will change economies, governments, and daily life as much as the industrial revolution did, in a fraction of the time. It will reach everything public goods touch, including who works and gets paid, who is cared for and taught, who owns the data and the models, and who answers for the decisions made with it.
What needs building, and will it reach everyone?
The public goods of the age, one domain at a time: care, knowledge, nature, culture, civic life, and survival itself. For each, the funder's questions: where does money do the most for human welfare and the living world it depends on, are there builders ready to use it, and how will we know it worked.
Who owns it, who decides, and who does it answer to?
Power, through sovereignty, governance, and agency: who can switch the infrastructure off, who decides and answers for it, and whether people are still free to act. For funders, the same questions: where is this work underfunded, who can carry it, and how do we measure what the money did.
Expect to take part. Your argument gets tested, your solution gets used, and the conversations are candid enough to change your mind. Every session is curated across fields, so a workshop on data rights might bring together an economist, a city official, and a researcher from an AI lab. Workshops put your work in the hands of the people who would use it. Debates run on the record or off. Funding rounds move real money, and the participants decide where it goes. Some sessions run under the Chatham House Rule, so people can argue freely at a time when public discourse rarely allows it.
Short talks from the people building the models, mechanisms, and policies.
Positions argued openly. Some sessions on the record, some off it.
Bring a model, a mechanism, or a vision and leave with it tested by the people who would use it.
Funding rounds, votes, and prototypes run together with participants.
Agenda is coming soon
13–14 March 2027 in San Francisco. We're confirming the venue now and will announce it here and on Luma.
Funders and philanthropic institutions, researchers and governance designers, people working on policy and public infrastructure, and founders. The program is built for people who want to help work out what the AI age should fund and who decides.
Applications are open and reviewed as they arrive. There is no deadline yet; when one is set it will appear here first. Apply to speak.
Luma lists the current tickets and passes, with prices and what each includes. The Patron pass comes with a seat at the private dinner on the eve of the Forum.
Main-stage talks are recorded and published on our YouTube channel. Workshops, sessions under the Chatham House Rule, and the dinner are not. Our media team also records interviews with community members across both days, and you can book one on site.
Yes. People do every year.
We don't usually offer travel support, but once you have a ticket we're happy to send a visa invitation letter. Just write to us.
Our partner page sets out the options. You can also write to us at contact@fundingthecommons.io.
We'd love to hear from you at contact@fundingthecommons.io.
Will you?
