Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is excited to announce the launch of Building Resilient Infrastructure through Dialogue, Growth, and Exchange (BRIDGE), which will explore how different stakeholders in the knowledge ecosystem can work together as AI reshapes how knowledge collections are used and valued.
This project, which runs through April 2028, has been made possible through a US$750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.
The challenge
The rapid development and deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI tools are reshaping the knowledge ecosystem. The AI development race is creating both opportunities and challenges for stakeholders across the knowledge ecosystem including cultural heritage institutions, publishers, developers, and funders. On one hand, there is a heightened demand for high quality data that can be used to train the LLMs. On the other, the rapid growth of AI is creating operational, legal, and sustainability challenges for the entire ecosystem. Infrastructure strain from high-volume data access, questions about fair compensation and attribution, and environmental concerns are emerging as shared challenges that require cross-sector collaboration.
What we’re doing
Through BRIDGE, we will bring together stakeholders that often lack opportunities to connect, including those that may have different drivers but shared problem areas to address. We will focus especially on organizations providing open, curated data and organizations that are seeking and using data for LLM training to help these groups look at the unanticipated but real-time collisions that are resulting from increased collection demand and consider how to recalibrate workflows and expectations to ensure the long-term stability of open collections. IOI will also leverage the trust that we have built with diverse stakeholder groups to plan and implement safe spaces in which mutually beneficial business tactics and frameworks can be designed that protect and ideally broaden the usefulness and resilience of open knowledge collections. The ultimate outcome: partnership models that align open knowledge strategies and commercial demand.
Why IOI?
We sit at the intersection of philanthropies, service providers, industry, and the research community. We have built a unique position as a trusted intermediary with a landscape view of the research ecosystem. BRIDGE also serves as an opportunity to pilot new mechanisms that strengthen IOI’s own organizational capacity and long-term sustainability. With BRIDGE, we aim to deepen our work at the complex intersections between groups — positioning IOI as the leading facilitator of complex, cross-sector stakeholder engagement in open infrastructure while developing sustainable revenue streams that reinforce our own organizational independence and growth.
What’s next?
We're conducting landscape research now. Participant recruitment begins in early 2026. If you're part of the knowledge ecosystem and navigating how AI is changing things - whether you manage collections, develop technology, fund infrastructure, or work on the legal, technical, or policy challenges, and you are interested in participating in the BRIDGE project, please reach out to us via research@investinopen.org.
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