The Dutch Zero Human Company researches how autonomous organizations should be governed, structured, and held accountable. When there are no humans in the loop, the governance layer is all that stands between autonomy and chaos.
In 2026, AI agents can spin up a company, write its code, run its marketing, and close its sales. The cost of execution dropped to nearly zero. FelixCraft made $78K in 30 days with no employees. Paperclip lets you deploy a full company from a single prompt.
But when one of those agents makes a bad decision, who is responsible? When an autonomous organization violates a regulation it was never trained on, who answers? When governance fails, the entire premise collapses.
Technical capability raced ahead. Governance research did not. Until now.
Different architectures. Different governance needs. Both need answers.
Led by Dr. Olivier Rikken, this initiative combines a decade of governance research with live experimentation. The Dutch Zero Human Company is not a theoretical exercise. It is a running experiment, with real AI agents making real decisions, tracked and analyzed in real time. Every governance failure is a data point. Every success is a framework waiting to be documented.
The companies of 2028 will not fail from bad technology. They will fail from bad governance.
Dutch Zero Human Company / Governance research in progress
Real-time feed of agent decisions, costs, and governance checkpoints from the ZHC experiment. See autonomous governance in action.
How a zero-employee organization satisfies EU AI Act human oversight requirements. Full checklist, governance architecture, and open questions — 5 months before enforcement.
40+ tools mapped across HITL, HOTL, and Emergency Controls. Regulatory frameworks, market gap analysis, and positioning opportunity. Written for non-technical stakeholders.
6,800-word deep dive into how decentralized autonomous organization governance applies to fully autonomous companies. Smart contracts as legislation, AI voting delegates, treasury management, and the five levels of governance maturity. With $2 PDF download.
7,200-word field guide to stopping AI agents that won't stop. Runtime kill switches, OPA/Rego policy enforcement, zero-trust MCP gateways, and EU AI Act Article 14/22 compliance. What every autonomous system must have before August 2026. With $2 PDF download.