Protogon Research builds autonomous AI systems and deploys them directly into financial markets through proprietary trading. The company's stated mission is to develop the most intelligent AI systems on the planet, with an explicit long-term orientation toward superintelligence. Financial markets serve not as an end in themselves, but as a rigorous testbed for AI that genuinely understands the world rather than simply replicating human behaviour or producing surface-level outputs.
The company was founded by Rafael Cosman, a serial entrepreneur previously known as co-founder of Archblock and the TrueFi DeFi protocol. Protogon Research is backed by Zelda Ventures, OVO, StartX, and the NVIDIA Inception Program. The team spans machine learning research, quantitative and trading systems, and trading operations.
Technically, the work sits at the intersection of AI research and live market deployment. The company's approach prioritises original, proprietary, and defensible AI technology over short-term trading returns. Key domains include autonomous systems development, machine learning, and quantitative finance, with additional context in DeFi and blockchain from the founder's background.
