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News from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (2025)

By PCC

The Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) is a global research and organizing network advancing cooperative, worker-led, and solidarity-economy approaches to digital platforms and artificial intelligence. PCC connects scholars, cooperatives, unions, technologists, policymakers, and social movements to develop democratic alternatives to extractive digital economies.

PCC is anchored at The New School through the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE), which serves as the Consortium’s research, fellowship, and convening hub.

2025 Overview

From conferences and research initiatives to teaching, fellowships, and public scholarship, PCC consolidated more than a decade of work on platform cooperativism in 2025 while, over the past two years, decisively shifting its focus from platform coops toward AI as infrastructure, governance system, and site of power. What began as building worker-owned alternatives to extractive platforms has expanded into “cooperative AI,” addressing data, models, compute, labor, and governance across the full technological stack and moving the field beyond critique of the authoritarian AI stack toward experimentation, shared infrastructure, cross-movement alliances, and the Solidarity Stack.

Convenings and Events

11th PCC Conference: Cooperative AI (Istanbul, Turkey)

PCC convened its eleventh annual international conference, Cooperative AI, in Istanbul in November 2025. The four-day gathering brought together participants from more than 30 countries, including cooperative leaders, AI researchers, legal scholars, union organizers, data workers, artists, and policymakers.

The conference focused on cooperative governance of AI systems; the labor and environmental conditions embedded in AI supply chains; worker-led and Global South–grounded approaches to AI governance; and the Solidarity Stack as a framework linking energy, data, labor, platforms, and governance. The program included keynotes, panels, workshops, documentary screenings, and collaborative design sessions.

Reflections, interviews, visual impressions, and thematic summaries from the conference were published toward the end of the year.

An additional notable public PCC event was “Beyond Democracy Theater.” 

Public Lectures and Keynotes

Throughout 2025, PCC leadership delivered invited lectures and keynotes at universities and cooperative federations, including a keynote at the Austrian Cooperative Congress in Vienna and public lectures such as From Vibe to Viability at Columbia GSAPP and RMIT in Melbourne. Highlights also included Trebor Scholz’s keynote on the Solidarity Stack in Istanbul.

Research and Publications

PCC Impact Report

In 2025, PCC published a widely read, comprehensive impact report documenting the scope, scale, and outcomes of its work. The report synthesizes PCC’s research, convenings, policy engagement, and ecosystem-building activities and serves as a key accountability and strategy document.

Research Reports and Case Studies

In 2025, ICDE Fellows made high-profile contributions shaping global debates on AI, data governance, and cooperative digital economies, including analysis published by the World Economic Forum, a peer-reviewed article in Globalizations on AI and labor in Latin America, and foundational CNRS research on cooperative data centers. Fellows also influenced policy through major reports such as A Vision for the Democracy Data Space, InternetLab analyses shaping Brazil’s data protection and platform regulation, and contributions to the International Legal Research & Analysis Initiative’s 2025 report on cooperative housing, while advancing applied research on worker voice in AI adoption at Cornell’s ILR School and national case studies of worker ownership such as the Drivers Cooperative–Colorado.

>> Click to read an overview of the fellows’ research, and many additional projects, across research, policy, and practice.

Additional research outputs published in 2025 included:

Groupmuse Impact Report

PCC published a dedicated impact report on Groupmuse, a platform cooperative organizing live, small-scale concerts in homes and community spaces. The report documents more than 10,000 concerts, participation by over 3,000 musicians, and an audience of approximately 65,000 attendees, highlighting cooperative approaches to cultural labor and community-building.

Special Issue: Solidarity Tech

PCC continued work on the forthcoming special journal issue Solidarity Tech for the Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management, examining the intersection of cooperative principles and digital technologies. It’ll be launched in 2026.

Public-Facing Scholarship

PCC affiliates contributed articles and essays to public and policy-relevant outlets throughout 2025, including a widely circulated Harvard Business Review article and ICDE essay on cooperative approaches to artificial intelligence.

Education and Training

AI Without Bosses

The global course AI Without Bosses ran alongside the Cooperative AI Conference and enrolled close to 200 participants from 33 countries. The course examined cooperative ownership of AI systems, data governance, and worker-led approaches to automation, with conference speakers joining as guest lecturers.

Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE)

Research Fellowship Program

ICDE serves as the research arm of PCC. In 2025, ICDE supported a new cohort of Research Fellows conducting empirically grounded, comparative research on cooperatives, digital platforms, labor, and artificial intelligence.

ICDE Research Fellows, 2025/2026

Their reports will be published early in 2026. The Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) has opened applications for its 2026–2027 Fellowship Program, a global, non-residential research fellowship for scholars examining cooperatives, unions, and solidarity-economy approaches to digital systems, including AI and data-intensive infrastructures.

Global Network and Partnerships

In 2025, PCC’s network spanned more than 60 countries, linking universities, cooperatives, unions, research institutes, and grassroots organizations.

Communications and Outreach

PCC maintained communication through its website, blog, and newsletter.

Next Conference: PCC 2026, Bangkok

Building on the momentum of the 2025 conference in Istanbul, PCC announced its next annual gathering for 2026. The 12th Platform Cooperativism Consortium Conference will take place November 12–15, 2026, at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

The conference will be titled Solidarity AI and will continue PCC’s work on cooperative approaches to artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and democratic governance. It is designed as a continuation of PCC’s multi-year effort to develop globally grounded alternatives to extractive and monopolistic models of the digital economy.

Acknowledgements

PCC thanks its research fellows, affiliate faculty, cooperative partners, supporters, speakers, students, and the PCC Collaboratory, whose contributions made the work of 2025 possible.