PL R&D is the research + field-building arm of the Protocol Labs innovation network.

Over the past decade, Protocol Labs has worked at the intersection of research, development, and technology translation. Our innovation network accelerates fundamental research in new fields into large-scale deployments, innovative companies, and world-class talent primed to build the future.

Too many important technologies fall into the innovation chasm between theoretical breakthroughs and real-world distribution. They are too applied for traditional academic funding, too uncertain for conventional venture capital, too technical for many philanthropies, and too early for governments or large institutions to adopt directly. That gap slows progress on technologies that could shape the future of human rights, public institutions, AI, robotics, and cognition. PL R&D exists to work in that gap.

We help fields form earlier and faster by connecting the people & resources they need: researchers, builders, funders, institutions, policymakers, open-source communities, and deployment partners. We help identify bottlenecks, opportunity spaces, technical questions, and deployment pathways that can most accelerate field growth. We fund and support early work that may be too uncertain for traditional markets, including research, prototypes, open-source tools, standards, datasets, and reference architectures. We focus on work that compounds: open protocols, reusable tools, public datasets, industry standards, evaluation frameworks, and infrastructure commons that many teams can build on. Our field-building is fundamentally progress-oriented, helping radicle ideas grow into world-class startups, global movements, or large public networks.

PL's focus areas now span the full spectrum from securing digital rights to accelerating safe breakthroughs in AI, robotics, and neurotechnology. PL R&D helps these emerging fields become more legible, coordinated, and fundable at scale.

Co-fund a program: We partner with foundations, philanthropists, public agencies, companies, and research funders on grant calls, prizes, fellowships, convenings, field maps, standards efforts, and pilot programs.

Build with us: We support builders and technical teams on open-source tools, protocols, datasets, reference architectures, prototypes, and infrastructure projects aligned with one of our focus areas.

Pioneer research: We help researchers define open questions, produce field maps, develop technical roadmaps, evaluate emerging systems, and turn frontier ideas into shared knowledge.

Join a convening or working group: We host experts, policymakers, funders, and operators for focused discussions on bottlenecks, opportunity spaces, and deployment pathways.

Advise a focus area: Our field-level Science Advisory Boards bring together domain experts to shape strategy, review opportunity spaces, identify promising teams, and connect PL R&D with important work happening across the field.

Explore deployment partnerships: We work closely with institutions, governments, nonprofits, and companies to explore pilots, standards, public-good infrastructure, and real-world applications for emerging technologies to accelerate field understanding & progress.

This critical century demands both caution and ambition. With technologies capable of rewriting genetic codes and reshaping how billions coordinate, we're building robust foundations across our four focus areas. From securing digital human rights through Web3 infrastructure to advancing AI and neurotechnology responsibly, from pioneering public goods funding mechanisms to developing breakthrough coordination systems, our work aims to harness humanity's potential while navigating existential challenges.

We do these things in ways that make technology easy to upgrade and hard to turn against users. We work toward this ideal by building open-source software, with users and contributors as vital components in the development process, and a licensing stack that ensures these tools remain free to obtain and use. Through collaboration across our focus areas, we're accelerating the R&D pipeline to push humanity forward.