On June 11, 2026, the OECD and its Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) invited Project Liberty Institute to present insights from its global work engaging limited partners and venture capital firms on responsible AI investing.

The invitation reflects the growing recognition that private markets will play an important role in shaping the future of AI. Over the past three years, Project Liberty Institute, together with partners including Reframe Venture, ImpactVC, Omidyar Network, UN B-Tech and others, has engaged more than 200 LPs and VCs representing over $6 trillion in capital across Europe, North America and Asia to advance how investors are navigating both the risks and opportunities associated with AI.

At a moment when the OECD and GPAI are considering how to translate the OECD AI Principles and emerging international standards, including the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, into practical guidance for investors, they convened perspectives from across the investment ecosystem. Project Liberty Institute’s Senior Director of Policy, Investment & Innovation, Paul Fehlinger, joined Sophie Walker, who leads responsible AI at EQT, one of the world’s largest private markets investors, and Laurie Fitzjohn-Sykes of Omidyar Network to explore what drives investor decision-making on AI.

A central insight emerging from this work is that investors increasingly recognize the material risks associated with AI and the need to strengthen due diligence, governance and stewardship practices. At the same time, they are asking a complementary question: what should they invest towards?

The EU Commission DG CNECT and Project Liberty Institute convenes European builders and experts to shape the future of innovation in Europe

Participants at the EU Commission DG CNECT and Project Liberty Institute workshop on human-centered data ecosystems in Brussels.

The workshop “Enabling Human-Centered Data Ecosystems: AI, Digital Identity and the Future of Social Networks in the EU,” organized jointly by the EU Commission DG CNECT and Project Liberty Institute, was held May 28, 2026 in Brussels at the DG CNECT headquarters.

Over 30 invited participants from across Europe brought their diverse experiences and expertise to bear on the question: how can we move from research and enlightening use-cases to functioning, durable human-centered digital infrastructure, and how can the European Commission help catalyse and scale these public-interest solutions?

From Regulation to Infrastructure

This past decade EU regulation built the foundation to create a safer digital space and a fairer playing field. With a 360° approach covering technology, governance and economic models, the discussions explored the technical building blocks for human-centered digital infrastructure, alternative business models, opportunities to scale beyond pilots, and what a shared toolbox should include to support this transition.

Workshop participants discussed the technical, governance, and economic building blocks needed to scale public-interest digital infrastructure in Europe.

Bringing Europe’s Builders Together

The workshop was opened by EU Commission DG CNECT leadership Prahbat Agarwal, Director “Online Platforms : Society” and  Project Liberty Institute’s Policy & Research Manager, Sarah Nicole. Participants, under Chatham House rule, all shared strong optimism and hopefulness for Europe to play a key role in building a human-centered digital economy, particularly given the current state of AI development and the international situation. Rita Wezenbeek, Director “Online Platforms : Economy” at the EU Commission DG CNECT closed the discussions.

This workshop confirmed that Europe has the builders, innovators, funders, and experts who can advance Europe’s leadership in establishing trusted and thriving data ecosystems. Project Liberty Institute and the EU Commission DG CNECT demonstrated the importance of bringing these actors together in the same room.

From Dialogue to Action

Insights and recommendations generated by the workshop will be translated into a practical toolkit, outlining steps that policymakers, builders, investors and others can take to move from dialogue to action. This will be a living document and will be open for further comment.

View or download the report as a pdf here.

Last month in New Delhi, on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit, Project Liberty Institute together with the Social Web Foundation, Public AI and the Modal Foundation convened a cross-sectoral workshop at the Observer Research Foundation. Together, policy experts, protocol designers, researchers, and governance practitioners ask a deceptively simple question: who controls the infrastructure of our social lives online—and what happens as AI agents increasingly mediate our digital interactions?

These inspiring conversations led to a new report: AI, Agency and Protocols: Power and Governance in Open Social Networks.

The report stresses the importance of continued dialogue from various perspectives globally and at all layers of this complex technical stack, from users to implementers, in order to create shared problem definitions, surface emerging priorities, and identify concrete next steps across research, standards development, and governance communities. At its core, the report calls for deeper, ongoing dialogue across regions and disciplines—from users to implementers—to better define shared challenges, surface emerging priorities, and identify concrete next steps across research, standards, and governance.

It also explores a set of key questions shaping the future of social networks:

Does openness guarantee agency?

Open protocols like ActivityPub, ATProto, and DSNP create the possibility of user control. But as AI agents begin acting as proxies within social infrastructures, that control can be quietly displaced, depending on choices made at the protocol level about delegation, consent, and revocation.

What does personal data reveal about others?

Agents acting on your behalf inevitably draw on information about the people you interact with. That data emerges from relationships, not individuals. What would it mean to govern it accordingly?

How can agent protocols and social protocols build the architecture of agency?

MCP, OpenClaw, HCP, and emerging agentic frameworks are being built largely in parallel to open social protocols. Neither community can afford insularity: agent protocols risk duplicating decades of hard-won progress in open social infrastructure, while social protocol communities risk treating agents as a peripheral concern rather than a structural transformation of the web.

Can openness survive its own business models?

Protocols and public AI infrastructure will ultimately be governed not by their stated values, but by the incentive structures embedded in their economic design. Strong alternatives to extractive business models have yet to emerge. The question isn’t just whether open systems are technically superior, it’s whether they can be funded without becoming what they were built to replace. The challenge is not only building open systems—but sustaining them without recreating the very dynamics they aim to replace.

A first-of-its-kind survey of venture capitalists active across North America, Europe, and other international markets finds widespread interest in responsible AI as an emerging investment opportunity. 

Over 90% of those polled saw major investment opportunities in AI infrastructure that prioritizes responsible design, including assurance systems, governance tooling, and trust-enabling technologies.

Today, these and other findings were released at the LP/VC MiniFrame Summit, hosted by Reframe Venture – together with Project Liberty Institute, and Omidyar Network – at the Mellon Foundation in New York City. Full survey results can be found in the White Paper.

Conducted between September 2025 and February 2026 by Reframe Venture, in collaboration with Project Liberty Institute and ImpactVC, the survey documents the views of 56 VC investors representing a range of roles, fund sizes, and varied stages and sectors. The research team also completed in-depth interviews with 30 VC investors and LPs managing more than $500 billion in assets.

Seventy-three percent of respondents believe companies with stronger responsible data and AI practices are more likely to succeed financially. Among investors with more than five years of experience, that rises to 83%.

This emerging investment thesis reflects a broader shift in the AI market. Tomicah Tillemann, President of Project Liberty Institute, explains:

“Every major technology wave has created its greatest returns not simply from applications alone, but from the trust infrastructure that made adoption possible. The same dynamic is playing out in AI, and the investors who see this opportunity will define the category.”

The survey findings suggest that responsible AI is moving beyond a compliance consideration and emerging as a new venture category with significant commercial potential.

“One signal from venture investors managing billions globally stands out: the infrastructure that makes AI trustworthy is becoming investable. Responsible AI is rapidly shifting from a compliance afterthought to a core layer. The investors we work with increasingly see it as the foundation for the next generation of AI companies,”

said Paul Fehlinger, Senior Director of Policy, Investment and Innovation at Project Liberty Institute.

The survey is part of a broader VC initiative unfolding over the past eight months; Project Liberty Institute, Reframe Venture, and Impact VC collaborated with investors and asset allocators around the world to better understand how capital markets are responding to the rise of AI.

The initiative, launched at SuperVenture Berlin in 2025, has engaged more than 200 venture capital funds through conferences, workshops, and research engagements across Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, San Francisco, and Cape Cod, and is building on the wider LP process Project Liberty Institute leads in partnership with ReframeVenture and Omidyar Network. The effort has already reached over 80 limited partners representing over $6 trillion in assets under management across markets.

For Dr. Johannes Lenhard, CEO and Co-Founder of Reframe Venture, the findings reflect a growing convergence in conversations taking place across the venture ecosystem:

“This survey reflects many of the conversations we are having with limited partners and venture investors in our community around the world. What makes this White Paper distinctive is that it examines both sides of the equation — the systemic risks posed by AI and the emerging investment opportunities in building more trustworthy technologies.”

Within the venture capital community, these conversations have evolved significantly in recent years. What began largely as a discussion about risk management and governance is increasingly becoming part of mainstream investment thinking.

According to Jeb Bell, Executive Director at Project Liberty Institute, this evolution reflects the growing maturity of the AI market itself.

“Project Liberty Institute has been engaging investors on these questions since 2024. What we are seeing now is a clear trend: More venture investors are beginning to recognize that the future of AI markets will increasingly depend on technologies that people and institutions can trust.”

For Oliver Nixon, Research Lead at Reframe Venture, who led the research, the results confirm that responsible AI is no longer viewed purely through a governance lens.

“Our sample includes investors from some of the largest VC firms globally. The results point consistently in the same direction: responsible AI is increasingly seen not only as a governance challenge but as a driver of long-term value creation.”

The survey builds on the collaboration among Reframe Venture, ImpactVC, and Project Liberty Institute, including the Responsible AI Due Diligence Toolkit for venture investors, released in December 2025 as the first practical framework specifically designed for venture capital investment processes.

Douglas Sloan, Managing Director of ImpactVC, sees the findings as an early signal that a new segment of the impact investment market may be taking shape.

“This points to the emergence of a new impact vertical around responsible AI,” said Sloan. “Investors are increasingly recognizing that technologies which strengthen trust, accountability, and human agency in AI systems can not only address important challenges, but can also represent compelling long-term investment opportunities.”

Looking ahead, Project Liberty Institute and its partners plan to continue engaging venture capital firms, asset owners, policymakers, and entrepreneurs worldwide to help catalyze investment in a better AI economy that gives people more of a voice, choice, and stake in the technology’s future.

Project Liberty Institute, ReframeVenture & ImpactVC release two new milestones of their new global VC-track

Project Liberty Institute (PLI), together with its strategic partners ReframeVenture, the largest community of over 150 LPs and 500 VCs dedicated to responsible investment, and ImpactVC, the leading global network of impact-focused venture capital firms with more than 700 members, is proud to release two major milestones of the new joint VC-track on responsible and impactful investment in AI. The initiative, launched earlier this year at SuperVenture 2025 in Berlin, comes at a moment when investors across the world are trying to make sense of an AI landscape that is shifting faster than any previous technological wave.

This work complements the LP-facing initiative on responsible investment in data and AI that PLI leads in partnership with ReframeVenture and Omidyar Network, as well as the new initiative with PLI and United Nations B-Tech on updating human rights investor guidance for public and private markets with a focus on data agency in the AI economy. Together, these efforts sit within Project Liberty’s broader mission to catalyze a better AI economy rooted in data agency, ensuring that citizens and organisations can exercise real voice, choice, and stake in the digital age.

There is a sense of urgency running through this work. As AI systems move from research labs into every corner of the economy, investors are being asked to make decisions in an environment where technical complexity and societal expectations are rising in parallel. By equipping investors with the tools and evidence needed to navigate this uncertainty, the initiative aims to support a shift toward an innovation ecosystem that augments human agency rather than eroding it.

“Across global markets, we hear the same message from LPs and VCs: AI is moving faster than existing diligence and governance practices. ReframeVenture, ImpactVC and PLI built this toolkit and survey because investors urgently need guidance for how to navigate both risks and opportunities. They want practical ways to identify where value is created, where risk accumulates, and where companies may lose agency over their models and data. This is about giving investors the tools to shape more consciously a better AI economy,” said Paul Fehlinger, Director of Policy, Governance Innovation & Impact, who leads PLI’s work with asset owners, investors and entrepreneurs and wrote about the dual lens of impact and due diligence for AI investing in a recent Op-Ed in ImpactAlpha.

A First-Version Due-Diligence Toolkit for VCs

The AI application and infrastructure stack is evolving at exceptional speed, and this framework reflects a pioneering due-diligence tool developed with international input from GPs, LPs, operators, and domain experts. It is intentionally agile and iterative, designed to evolve as technologies mature, new risks emerge, and our shared understanding of AI’s impact deepens.

The toolkit provides VCs with a set of nuanced, sector- and stage-sensitive questions that can be directly integrated into their existing diligence flows. The tool helps investors probe what is material:

• Where the company is strong
• Where blind spots may exist
• Where hidden technical, governance, or model-dependency debt may accumulate
• How data, supplier choices, or architectural decisions affect operational resilience, user trust, compliance, and long-term agency

The focus on agency, trust, and model or supplier lock-in aligns with a growing shift among LPs, who increasingly expect VCs to ensure that companies maintain meaningful control over their data, models, and downstream decision-making environments, a prerequisite for scalable, interoperable, and rights-preserving AI.

The toolkit builds on convenings hosted across three contients jointly by ReframeVenture, ImpactVC, and PLI over the past six months at SuperVenture, FRAME, ImpactFlock, PLI’s partner university Stanford University, Responsible Investment Forum Asia, dedicated engagement sessions in Japan, and Norrsken Impact Week, as well as focused working-group consultations within PLI’s partner organizations. These discussions, often unfolding in packed rooms and side sessions, helped surface the practical challenges investors face and shaped a first tool version built to meet them where they are today.

A pioneering global VC Survey on Responsible and Impactful AI Investment

The second milestone of the joint efforts is the launch of the first-of-its-kind global survey of VCs focused on responsible and impactful AI investment, distributed across the ReframeVenture and ImpactVC communities.

The survey gathers the first comprehensive dataset on how VCs perceive the risks, opportunities, and responsibilities associated with AI development and deployment. It examines:

• Current VC capabilities in responsible AI due diligence
• How firms assess model dependencies, data provenance, trust, and governance
• Regulatory understanding across jurisdictions
• Where investors see the most pressing barriers, from technical gaps to governance challenges
• How LP expectations are evolving across the US, Europe, and Asia

By mapping these insights, the survey helps identify where investors need further guidance, and where new norms or infrastructure could meaningfully strengthen data agency and the ability of users –  individuals, businesses, and ecosystems –  to exercise voice, choice, and stake in AI-driven environments. Aggregated results will be included in a white paper in early 2026.