The real-world efforts I’m keeping an eye on — filter by the Open Loops they bear on. Some are scaling, some are early bets, some are contested. A living map of problems ↔ who’s working on them.
Efforts
41 items under this folder.
1X Technologies
Building NEO, a home humanoid for chores, with expert-supervised learning for tasks it does not yet know.
1x.tech
Acorn Land Labs
The Land Lab Simulator — a drag-and-drop app to design a self-sufficient off-grid homestead (food, water, energy, sanitation) before you build it.
acornlandlabs.com
Aircela
A refrigerator-sized machine that makes fossil-free gasoline from air — direct air capture and fuel synthesis in a single appliance.
aircela.com
Allen Coral Atlas
Satellite-derived maps of every shallow coral reef on Earth — habitat, bathymetry, and near-real-time bleaching monitoring, free for conservation.
allencoralatlas.org
AnyLogic
Multimethod simulation software that combines agent-based, system-dynamics, and discrete-event modeling in one environment for studying complex systems.
anylogic.com
Arc Institute
A nonprofit research institute giving scientists long-horizon funding to attack complex diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration — and building the computational tools to do it.
arcinstitute.org
cadCAD
Open-source Python framework for modeling and simulating complex adaptive systems and their dynamics over time.
cadcad.org
Coral Vita
Land-based coral farms that grow reef-ready coral via microfragmentation — restoration aimed at months, not decades.
coralvita.co
Cormas
An agent-based modeling platform for natural-resource management, built for "companion modeling" where stakeholders help build the simulation themselves.
cormas.org
Deep Future
Gordon Brander's notebook on tools for thought, local-first software, and the long-run future of computing.
deepfuture.now
Dynamicland
Bret Victor's lab incubating a 'humane dynamic medium' — communal, spatial computing with real paper and objects instead of screens.
dynamicland.org
Edge Esmeralda
A month-long popup village where builders live together to prototype the community, governance, and institutions of a future town.
edgeesmeralda.com
Elicit
An AI research assistant that automates literature review — finding, screening, and synthesizing findings from scientific papers.
elicit.com
FarmBot
Open-source CNC farming robots — a Cartesian gantry that seeds, waters, and weeds a raised bed, with all the hardware, software, and documentation free to copy.
farm.bot
Figure
Building Figure 03, a general-purpose humanoid robot for everyday home help, with Helix as the AI layer for unpredictable home environments.
figure.ai
folkjs
An open research project for malleable, spatial software — programmable canvases and "folk" interfaces built from scrappy, composable web primitives.
folkjs.org
GreenWave
Popularizing regenerative ocean farming — vertical kelp + shellfish farms that need no inputs, sequester carbon, and produce food.
greenwave.org
Human Chemical Co.
An AI lab running regulatory-grade chemical safety + toxicology assessments — hazard prediction and risk reports in minutes, not months.
humanchemical.com
Ink & Switch
An independent research lab inventing the tools and infrastructure for local-first, malleable software.
inkandswitch.com
Insilica
AI toxicology and cheminformatics — automating chemical hazard assessment (ToxIndex, BioBricks, Sysrev).
insilica.co
Mesa
An open-source Python framework for agent-based modeling — define agents and their interactions, run the simulation, and watch emergent behavior.
github.com
Midjourney Scanner
The image-AI company's health division: a ~60-second, radiation-free whole-body ultrasound screen (licensing Butterfly Network).
midjourney.com
Mossy Earth
Membership-funded rewilding running 30+ restoration projects worldwide — including a coral reef rebuild in Indonesia.
mossy.earth
Ocean Diagnostics
Instruments and software that make microplastics countable — samplers, microscopes, and machine vision that turn "there's plastic in the water" into hard numbers.
oceandiagnostics.com
Open Source Ecology
Building the Global Village Construction Set — 50 open-source industrial machines you need to start a small, self-sufficient civilization.
opensourceecology.org
Physical Intelligence
Developing general-purpose physical intelligence models that can control many robots across many tasks.
pi.website
PlanetCare
Washing-machine filters that capture microplastic fibres from laundry, with a closed-loop cartridge return.
planetcare.org
PlasticList
Independently lab-tested 300+ Bay Area foods for plastic-related chemicals and published every result openly.
plasticlist.org
Polis
Open-source software for understanding what large groups think — surfaces the real axes of agreement and division in a conversation, not just a poll result.
pol.is
Qualia Research Institute
A nonprofit building a precise, mathematical account of consciousness and valence — and mapping the full state-space of possible experience.
qri.org
Reef Check
A global citizen-science program training volunteer divers to survey reef health on one standardized protocol — turning recreational dives into data.
reefcheck.org
Remedy Scientific
AI- and sensor-guided systems that detect and destroy PFAS 'forever chemicals' in contaminated land.
remedyscientific.com
Santa Fe Institute
The original research institute for complexity science — emergence, scaling, and the laws that cut across cells, cities, and economies.
santafe.edu
Sunday Robotics
Building Memo, a home robot for chores, trained from human demonstrations collected through a Skill Capture Glove.
sunday.ai
Synhelion
Solar fuels — using concentrated sunlight as process heat to turn CO₂ and water into drop-in jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel.
synhelion.com
Terraform Industries
Mass-producing synthetic natural gas from sunlight, air, and water — a bet that cheap solar makes synthetic hydrocarbons cheaper than drilling.
terraformindustries.com
The Ocean Cleanup
Builds systems to extract plastic from the ocean and intercept it in rivers before it ever reaches the sea.
theoceancleanup.com
The Tyre Collective
Wheel-mounted device that captures tyre-wear particles at the source — the single largest source of microplastics.
thetyrecollective.com
Topos Institute
A research institute using category theory to build a compositional science of complex, interacting systems.
topos.institute
Unitree Robotics
A robotics company building relatively accessible quadruped, humanoid, arm, perception, and component hardware.
unitree.com
UrbanSim
An open-source urban simulation platform that models how land use, transportation, and the economy co-evolve — a flight simulator for regional policy.
urbansim.com