Who is hypermind?
Passionate about crowd forecasting and collective intelligence
Founded in 2000 as NewsFutures Prediction Market
New York | Paris | Abu Dhabi
Serving clients worldwide:
Large companies
Governments
Think Tanks / NGOs
Media
Leadership Team
President & CTO
CEO & Chief Scientist
Managing Director, USA
Partner & CFO
On a mission to make organizations smarter
We have pushed the state of the art over two decades through R&D collaborations with scientists from leading laboratories:
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
UM6P School of Collective Intelligence
Good Judgment Project
Yahoo! Research labs
Institut Jean Nicod
Raytheon BBN
UC Berkeley
Sciences Po
Stanford
HEC
MIT
We hold this truth to be self-evident that intelligence is collective; that higher intelligence, be it artificial or cerebral, always consolidates the input of many.
We know that all opinions deserve consideration, that the worst enemy of intelligence isn’t crowds but conformity; that wisdom’s ally isn’t isolation but diversity.
We believe that intelligence in the 21st century will not be artificial only, that a human brain is still the most powerful computer in the world, and that there’s no known limit to what can be achieved by a well-organized multitude of minds.
We call this supercollective intelligence. Since 2000, we are on a mission to empower large organizations, companies, and governments with it.
Because the world won’t get better until we get smarter, together.
Origin Story
In the spring of 2000, Maurice and Emile developed the first version of the NewsFutures prediction market, in Annapolis, MD, USA.
They were inspired by this brilliant article from Robin Hanson.
The prediction market was deployed in France first, where it was soon spotted by The New York Times. It published a story on NewsFutures in its July 2001 print edition (below).
We're live!
USATODAY.com hosted the US version of the prediction market for a few years under the name "Sports Exchange".
As this screenshot from January 2002 shows, the live probability forecasts were integrated in the articles.
(In case you are wondering, Juan Gonzalez ended saying "No" to the Mets and "Yes" to Texas.)
We're published!
Corporate America soon took notice and started soliciting the collective predictions of NewsFutures champion forecasters about the business issues it cared about.
This screenshot is from a 2003 prediction market sponsored by Eli Lilly.
We're in business!
James Surowiecki writes about NewsFutures in the first few pages of his brilliantly titled book "The Wisdom of Crowds", and also in the New Yorker.
We're famous!
In 2004, a landmark experimental study conducted by NewsFutures with leading researchers from Stanford and Yahoo! concludes that play-money prediction markets can be just as accurate as real-money markets.
This opens the way to wider corporate adoption of prediction markets.
We're proven!
In January 2006, CBS features our prediction market in a Sunday Morning show about the wisdom of crowds.
(Close inspection of the video reveals that the market already features odds about pandemics and Donald Trump.)
In a world premiere, the segment also includes a brief interview of a champion prediction trader.
Mom, we're on TV!
Soon after, James Surowiecki (left) and Emile are invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the wisdom of crowds and prediction markets.
It's hard to compete for attention with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who are also in attendance.
We're evangelizing!
In 2008, we invent the Idea Pageant, a prediction-based platform that let hundreds of InterContinental Hotels Group techies propose and filter new service ideas. The winning idea led to this Google Maps case study.
This innovative platform would later evolve into Hypermind's Storm platform for crowd ideation and prioritization.
We're crowd-storming!
In 2010, senior strategic consultants Ed Rhoads (second from left) and Abe Medawar (rightmost), join NewsFutures to professionalize consulting in the prediction market space.
The company is rebranded as Lumenogic.
We're more than tech!
In 2012, the University of Pennsylvania's Philip Tetlock (left, pictured with Emile) asks us to join the IARPA-funded Good Judgment Project to contribute our expertise in prediction markets.
The multi-year project investigated the geopolitical forecasting ability of the general public, and optimal ways to aggregate individual predictions into crowd forecasts.
It will lead to the development prediction polls, an alternative to prediction markets, of which Hypermind's Prescience platform is a powerful instance.
It also proves the existence of a general-purpose forecasting elite, aka Superforecasters, which is the basis of Hypermind's Crowd panel of champion forecasters.
We're inspired!
Emile also had a chance to discuss geopolitical crowd forecasting with his old friend Antony Blinken, who was then National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden.
We're redacted !
In 2014, Lumenogic launches a new flagship prediction market, called Hypermind, to harvest and nurture an international community of champion forecasters.
It quickly attains world-class performance.
We're debunking myths!
In 2017, Lumenogic teams with Raytheon BBN and others to compete in a new IARPA research program investigating Hybrid machine-crowd forecasting.
This leads to the development of our Prescience crowd-forecasting platform.
(That's Maurice and Emile at an IARPA meeting in Washington DC.)
We're the future!
In early 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security partners with Hypermind to crowd-forecast infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Our Prescience platform aggregates the forecasts of hundreds of public health professionals with those of Hypermind champion forecasters.
A year later, at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins professor Tara Kirk Sell is invited at the Capitol to testify about our project in front of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
We're awed!
Also in 2019, Hypermind helps found the School of Collective Intelligence at University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Rabat, Morocco. It is the world's first multidisciplinary graduate program (Masters & PhD) in collective intelligence.
There, Emile teaches a class on crowd forecasting to awesome students from all over Africa.
We're training the leaders of a better world!
So that's how Hypermind came to be.
Let's write the rest of the story together!
