About

History of Iliad

Iliad was founded in 2025 by Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel & Caleb Rak. 

Iliad began with the ILIAD conference series — the first official conference series of math-based alignment research. The momentum behind the conference convinced us that there was a need for the infrastructure to support a fundamental approach to AI alignment. 

Prior to founding Iliad, Alexander was involved in launching Timaeus & Simplex — two research organizations that apply the methods of mathematics and physics to open problems in AI alignment. The success of both organizations convinced Alexander that this approach to alignment research might be scalable.

Iliad advances AI safety via three pathways: launching research bets, training alignment researchers, and building the field infrastructure that can transform the science of alignment into a formal discipline. Since 2025, Iliad has incubated four research bets: Principia, XOR Labs, Stormglass, and AIXI Labs. 

The first iterations of the Iliad Intensive, a four-week taught program aimed at PhDs and postdocs, began in April of 2026. Iliad has also run the Iliad Fellowship, the ILIAD conference series, and is launching the peer-reviewed Alignment Journal. 

Going forward, Iliad plans to rapidly scale its training program and incubation pipeline. We are also building the Textbook From the Future — a comprehensive online resource which aggregates the forefront of alignment research. Somewhere between a peer-reviewed journal and a Wikipedia with comments, it provides the canonical foundation for the field of alignment.