INFER (formerly Cultivate) vs Metaculus Pro
| Attribute | INFER (formerly Cultivate) | Metaculus Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2019 | 2015 |
| HQ | Washington, D.C., USA | Santa Cruz, California, USA |
| Type | U.S. Government Early Warning & Policy Forecasting Platform | Enterprise Forecasting & Institutional Analytics Service |
| Regulated | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Valuation | — | — |
| Status | Active | Active |
| Prestige | 80% | 86% |
INFER (INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk)—originally launched as Foretell by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) in 2020 with seed funding from Open Philanthropy—was created to provide quantitative early-warning signals for U.S. policy and technology decision-makers. The program transitioned to the University of Maryland's Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) under the INFER banner before evolving into the RAND Forecasting Initiative (RFI), operated by the RAND Corporation in partnership with software developer Cultivate Labs.
Operating as a non-monetary, reputation-scored crowdsourced forecasting ecosystem, INFER utilizes Cultivate Labs' enterprise software engine to capture probability distributions on critical policy questions. The platform decomposes complex geopolitical, artificial intelligence, biosecurity, and microelectronics challenges into discrete, measurable indicators. Forecasts are gathered from a hybrid crowd composed of vetted public forecasters, university researchers, and U.S. government analysts, with individual contributions evaluated using strict Brier score calibration.
Full profile: INFER (formerly Cultivate) →Metaculus Pro is the institutional enterprise suite and pro forecasting deployment engine operated by Metaculus Inc., a registered Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) founded in 2015 by theoretical physicist Anthony Aguirre, data scientist Max Wainwright, and astrophysicist Greg Laughlin. Established to build global epistemic infrastructure, Metaculus evolved from an open reputation-based crowd forecasting engine into a primary quantitative decision-support layer for global institutions, non-profits, and policy bodies.
Metaculus Pro allows enterprise clients, philanthropic foundations, biosecurity research groups, and government units to launch private forecasting instances or deploy elite "Metaculus Pro Forecasters." Utilizing the platform's proprietary Recalibrated Community Prediction model—which aggregates, recalibrates, and accuracy-weights continuous, binary, and date-range probability distributions—Metaculus delivers high-resolution foresight. Pro Forecasters are hand-selected, track-record-vetted experts who pair calibrated numeric probabilities with transparent qualitative reasoning.
Full profile: Metaculus Pro →