Conjecture

London, UK

https://www.conjecture.dev/

established13 peopleFounded 2022

Conjecture is a for-profit AI alignment startup founded in March 2022 by Connor Leahy, Sid Black, and Gabriel Alfour, who met through EleutherAI. Based in London, the company focuses on solving the AI control problem by developing Cognitive Emulation (CoEm), an alternative AI paradigm that breaks down cognitive tasks into human-like primitive building blocks to create LLM/software hybrid systems that are predictably boundable and controllable. Conjecture also supports field-building through fiscal sponsorship of the ARENA program and the London cohort of MATS, and previously ran the Refine conceptual alignment research incubator.

Funding Details

Annual Budget: -
Monthly Burn Rate: -
Current Runway: -
Funding Goal: -
Funding Raised to Date: $25,000,000
Fiscal Sponsor: -

Theory of Change

Conjecture believes the core problem of advanced AI is the control problem: building systems that do exactly what they are told and no more. Their theory of change is that current frontier AI architectures are fundamentally uncontrollable because they optimize in opaque, unpredictable ways. By developing Cognitive Emulation, Conjecture aims to produce a new class of AI systems whose reasoning is decomposed into auditable, human-legible primitives, making it possible to bound their capabilities and verify their behavior. This predictable boundedness is intended as a near-term, practical safety property that can be achieved before AGI, creating systems that are safe and useful for businesses. In parallel, Conjecture supports field-building through ARENA and MATS to grow the number of technically skilled AI safety researchers, increasing the overall capacity of the field. Connor Leahy also advocates publicly and in policy settings for compute-based regulation and international coordination to slow frontier AI development.