Roadmap · Updated May 2026
The grid for the knowledge economy.
Built step by step. In public.
WARD is open infrastructure for AI access control on the web. This page shows where we are today, the law that makes it urgent, and the concrete steps from here.
Stage 0 — Now (Q2 2026)
Live infrastructure. Currently raising and pitching.
The foundation is built — open-source standard, monitoring SaaS, first pilot live. We are not building from scratch; we are raising the funding and the audience needed to take the next step. This is the stage you can help with directly — apply for a role, fund the standard, write about us, or send us your first ward.json.
Foundation shipped
Shippedward-protocol v0.1.0 (MIT, 42 tests) · ward.json v1.0 spec stable · getward.org SaaS in production · web-pruefer.de integrated.
Active fundraising
In progress11 grant applications submitted across EU and US public-interest funders — NLnet, Mozilla Builders, OTF, GitHub Secure OSS Fund, EU EIC, German Forschungszulage, Saxony InnoStartBonus. Decisions arrive May–October 2026.
Public pitches
In progressInnoStartBonus jury round in Dresden — 27 May 2026. Founder forums and pitch workshops across Saxony and the wider EU founder circuit.
Building audience
In progressLinkedIn presence focused on AI access rights and the coming Agent-to-Agent economy. First conversations with EU publishers and AI crawler operators.
Why now
The law gives the right. WARD makes it executable.
EU regulation already requires AI providers to respect content owners' opt-outs. But a right without a protocol is paper. These four laws define the demand for the infrastructure WARD provides.
“Providers of general-purpose AI models shall... put in place a policy to comply with Union law on copyright... in particular to identify and comply with... a reservation of rights expressed pursuant to Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790.”
EU AI Act
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 53
General-purpose AI providers must respect machine-readable opt-out mechanisms for text and data mining. WARD provides the format.
Read on EUR-Lex →
DSM Directive
Directive (EU) 2019/790, Article 4
Rightsholders may reserve their rights against text and data mining "in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means." WARD is that means.
Read on EUR-Lex →
GDPR
Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Article 5(1)(b)
Purpose limitation. Personal data collected for one purpose (e.g. legal Impressum disclosure) cannot be repurposed for AI training. WARD enforces this at the response layer.
Read on EUR-Lex →
EU Data Act
Regulation (EU) 2023/2854
Frames data as a market resource with shared access rights. WARD-Pay extends this logic to AI access via micropayments.
Read on EUR-Lex →
Market signals
- Reddit licensed its corpus to Google for $60M (2024) — institutional content has a price tag. The small publisher has no mechanism.
- The New York Times v. OpenAI — billions in damages claimed, but no protocol-level solution exists.
- Cloudflare AI Audit (Sept 2024) — proves market demand. But single-vendor and binary (block / allow).
- Visa Intelligent Commerce (Apr 2025) — the payment rails for AI agents are being built. WARD is the access-rights layer that pairs with them.
The journey from here
Three stages, on a public timeline.
From one founder to a small team
- →Co-founder + first 2 hires (BD + engineer) — solo founder grows to four people.
- →WordPress plugin ships to wordpress.org — 43% of the web, lowest possible adoption barrier.
- →10 paid pilot sites in Saxony onboarded with live monitoring dashboards.
- →First draft of the "WARD Certified Crawler" specification — published for community review.
- →W3C Community Group submission to start the standardisation track.
Pay layer + first reference customers — from standard to economy
- →WARD-Pay live — micropayments for AI access via GNU Taler (privacy-preserving, EU-funded payment infrastructure).
- →First EU publisher reference pilot — one major news outlet or academic press as a reference case.
- →First enterprise operational-data pilot — research lab, satellite, or sensor network.
- →Team scales to four — operations, BD pipeline, engineering velocity.
Foundation + certification at scale — the grid
- →WARD Foundation governance launches — Linux Foundation / Let's Encrypt model.
- →AI Crawler Certification program at scale — "WARD Certified" as the trust signal across the web.
- →Reference implementation for EU AI Act Article 53 compliance — official conformance test suite.
- →Marketplace layer on top of the protocol — "Stripe for AI access".
- →Multi-country deployment beyond the EU.
Why grants, not VC
Public-interest funding by design.
WARD is intentionally not raising venture capital at this stage. A neutral standard cannot be optimised for a near-term exit — and a founder beholden to investors with a five-year IRR target cannot credibly tell crawlers, publishers, or regulators that the protocol stays open.
We follow the path Let's Encrypt and the Linux Foundation took before us: public-interest grants fund the standard layer, commercial services fund the business on top. This buys us the one thing venture capital can never offer — time horizon and independence.
Submitted (Feb–Mar 2026)
- •NLnet NGI Zero
- •NLnet NGI TALER
- •NLnet NGI Fediversity
- •Mozilla Builders
- •OTF Internet Freedom Fund
- •GitHub Secure Open Source Fund
- •EU EIC Accelerator (re-submission planned)
- •German Forschungszulage (R&D tax credit)
- •Saxony InnoStartBonus — in jury round 2
What funding unlocks
- •Co-founder + 2 first hires (BD + engineer)
- •WordPress plugin shipped to wordpress.org
- •10 paid pilot sites in Saxony onboarded with monitoring
- •WARD-Pay implementation (GNU Taler integration)
- •W3C Community Group launched
Get involved
Three ways to plug in.
You publish on the web
Install the open-source middleware or sign up for monitoring. Free during the pilot phase.
You fund public-interest infrastructure
WARD is actively raising. Happy to share the grant pipeline, financials, and roadmap detail.
You operate an AI crawler
The "WARD Certified" program is in spec. Early adopters shape the standard.
Curious? Have ideas? Want to help?
You don't need to fit a category. If you find this project interesting, see a flaw, or have an idea for how it should evolve — open an issue, send a pull request, or just write.
Built by Slava Spitsyn · Leipzig · in public.