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Edge City is a “society incubator” dedicated to advancing human flourishing.
We host monthlong popup villages where people at the frontiers of technology, science, and culture live and work together. Each village is an environment for running real experiments on new ideas and collaborations.
We have hosted 8 villages across 4 continents, with over 12,000 participants and hundreds of projects & experiments.
Edge City is a project of Edge Institute, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Each village brings together a few hundred residents to live, learn, and build side by side. Shared meals, daily workouts, and open-ended schedules create the perfect environment for collaboration and experimentation.
The temporary nature of these events creates freedom to experiment outside of the box, mixed with a shared sense of urgency and ambition to build and ship before the end of the month. It's innovation at its most creative, health at its most natural, and community at its most fun.
Read more about what we learned in 2025 here.
Our villages are grounded in four core principles:
Build and co-create: Everyone contributes. Edge City is a place to build.
Multidisciplinary connections: Breakthroughs happen when fields intersect.
Default healthy: Villages are designed for health, energy, and focus.
Multigenerational: Families, kids, and elders enrich the community.
Read more about our approach here.
Tech is moving fast; society isn’t.
The systems that shape our time—institutions, norms, governance structures—were made for a prior world. Ones that worked in the past are now rigid and slow-moving, unable to evolve to meet the opportunities and challenges of the current moment.
By creating “micro-exits,” we create space to experiment with new systems, technologies, and practices. What works in these experimental environments can then be shared with society, shaping a better future for everyone.
We are building a ‘network city’: a global network of interconnected hubs that will run experiments and share learnings with people and ideas flowing freely. Some hubs will be temporary, while others will grow into permanent anchors for the communities.
These hubs leverage frontier tech—AI for decision-making, cryptography for secure collaboration, decentralized networks for governance, and emerging tools for energy and resilience.
We are early in our journey, and we'd love to have you join us. Read more About what we've accomplished so far, or check out our Roadmap to see where we're headed. Sign up to join a village in the timeline below.
Edge City is a space for experimentation, where big ideas are tested and projects are accelerated. Below is a partial list of initiatives that were born, incubated, or iterated on at Edge. Reach out if you’d like to bring something transformative to life here.
Constellation is a venture-backed neurotech startup that evolved at Edge Esmeralda, where the founding team collected neural data on-site while closing their lead investor and raising $10,000,000. They're building the first foundation model of brain state by training AI on real-world neural, behavioral, and physiological data to advance mental health treatment.
Built by SimpleFi and Edge City, EdgeOS is an open-source operating system designed for network societies. It provides an extensible portal for resident engagement, making it easier for popup villages and emerging communities to coordinate, connect, and build together with shared infrastructure.
Cursive, a cryptography and design lab, worked with Edge City to iterate on their tools for digital signatures and data authenticity, using cutting-edge cryptography to improve human connection.
The Daimo team conceptualized and prototyped their first product—a seamless way to pay for anything, anywhere—at our early events. Since then, they’ve become a fixture at Edge City, with the mission of advancing real world Ethereum.
Summer of Protocols is a research initiative exploring protocols as a foundational lens for understanding the world. At Edge City, their Protocol Worlds program brought together architects, cryptographers, and creatives to co-create speculative futures through world-building and collaborative inquiry.
RadicalxChange tested ∈dges, a community currency designed to strengthen collaboration and keep value circulating within communities. This experiment demonstrated how local currencies can foster trust, mutual aid, and resilient economies.
Crecimiento is a crypto movement transforming Argentina into an international technology hub. Incubated at Edge City, this initiative has passed regulatory sandboxes, is building a digital Special Economic Zone, and driving QuarkID adoption—bringing financial freedom and innovation to millions of Argentines.
Edge City partners with Devon Zuegel on Esmeralda, a new walkable town 90 minutes north of San Francisco. Our month-long popup villages take place on Esmeralda's future site, prototyping the culture and systems that will define this permanent community. Devon credits Edge Esmeralda with accelerating her project by several years.
Designed to facilitate secure, privacy-first access, ZuPass is a decentralized identity solution used across Edge City experiments. It’s a model for how cryptography can make communities more efficient and interconnected.
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Edge City helps builders and researchers turn bold ideas into reality through grants, fellowships, and supportive communities. We focus on projects that push boundaries and work to accelerate human flourishing. Read more about how we support builders here!
Inflection Grants provide $2,000 for creative young builders (under 25) to turn unusual ideas into reality. We focus on turning points where a small push can make a big difference. Meet our first cohort here!
The SHIFT Grants Program funds d/acc projects in biosecurity, cyber defense, information resilience, physical resilience, neurotech, and social technology. Meet the first cohort here!
The Fellowship is a month long in-person program that empowers young builders (under 25) dedicated to accelerating human flourishing across frontier tech, science, and society, and features a full-ride to one of our popup villages. Meet the Edge Esmeralda cohort here!
Edge City residencies support early-stage builders, researchers, artists, and organizers exploring frontier ideas in community. Each residency provides space, structure, and collaborators to push a project forward, and share it with the village.
Some of our past residencies:
☼ World Builder Residency - solving meaningful problems for local and global communities
☼ d/acc Residency - building decentralized and democratic tech
☼ Human Tech Residency - prototyping humanistic technologies
☼ Lisk Emerging Markets Founders Residency - leveling up frontier founders
☼ Long Journey Residency - helping magically weird founders leap from -1 to 0
☼ Agartha House - coliving with creative technologists and benevolent AI
☼ Edge City Fellowship - supporting talented builders under 25
Interested in hosting or joining a residency at Edge Esmeralda (May 30–June 27 2026)? Get in touch!
From The Community
On what it feels like to be a part of Edge City
"Edge City did an excellent job integrating diverse participants from all kinds of background: technical and non-technical, crypto, biotech and culture, young and old. I learned a lot from my time there."
"We could not have done this Longevity workshop with top researchers without Edge City. This is going to be one of those moments that people talk about in the future where so many impactful things were conceptualized."
"Edge Esmeralda's ability to bring people together in temporary spaces that yield lifelong relationships — as well as life changing conversations and discoveries — makes me excited to see how that same energy imbues the permanent village Esmeralda is building."
"It's an eclectic group of optimists that push each other to learn and grow in their careers and live healthy and more meaningful lives. I love spending time with the people in the Edge City community."
"I was so inspired by the caliber of people, different projects and ambitious concept. It shifted my perspective and reminded me of how important this industry is in helping make a positive change in the world."
"I never realized the possibility of social innovation until being part of the Edge community. There is no way that the way we organize our communities today is the best that civilization has to offer. We can dramatically improve our communities and quality of life through some space for experimentation and first principles thinking."
"At the crossroads I was at being a fellow at Edge City was one of the most impactful things I could've done. It brought out a side of me that I really liked. It brought out a side of me that was open to trying new, weird experiences, hosting dinners and discussing theories on reincarnation over group hikes, while working on my own projects."
"Edge Esmeralda was one of the most valuable uses of my time last year - personally, professionally, and creatively. As a founder, I tested my product with real users. As an artist, I revived my drawing practice and am now publishing a book. And as a human, I found lifelong friends and a community building toward a better future."
"Edge City is unparalleled in its ability to cultivate multi-disciplinary ecosystems that accelerate progress in frontier industries like Cryptography, Neurotech and Longevity."
"The neurotech workshop I attended was extremely high signal and talent dense. I could not have had that discussion anywhere else."
Denver
Esmeralda
Lanna
Austin
South Africa
Esmeralda
Bhutan 2025
Patagonia
EIN: 99-2785973
Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.