Why We Exist
We believe in unlocking human potential.
That means giving people true ownership of their data, and free access to knowledge—not gated systems, opaque models, or centralized control.
The internet today was not designed with that in mind. It's fragmented. Disconnected. Full of data that's stripped of meaning and impossible to trust at scale.
UOR Foundation exists to fix that—by building the infrastructure for an internet where data is sovereign, semantic, and empowering. Where information flows freely and meaningfully across people, systems, and borders.
Because when data has context, people can build. Learn. Create. Dream.
How We Work
We build open tools and standards that help people, systems, and institutions make sense of their data—no matter where it lives or how it moves.
We focus on:
- Encoding semantic context in every artifact
- Enabling federated, traceable computation across disconnected systems
- Preventing hallucinations, metadata loss, and system drift
- Returning agency to those who use and depend on data
We're not just improving infrastructure—we're empowering imagination.
What We're Building
It started with a practical challenge: how to transmit huge amounts of critical data across disconnected systems. That led to a bigger question:
What if the internet had a shared reference system for meaning?
That idea became the UOR Framework: a universal way to encode and reference data that preserves what matters most—its semantic meaning.
UOR doesn't just unify formats—it unifies modalities: numbers, language, images, signals, models. All in a way that systems can understand, trace, and build on.
Whether you're training a model, building infrastructure, curing disease, or imagining a new kind of knowledge graph—UOR is here to help you solve the hardest problems and realize your biggest dreams.
The UOR Framework began at Red Hat, as documented in this pioneering article which laid the foundation for what would become the UOR Foundation.
How UOR Is Built
UOR Foundation is a hybrid of public benefit corporation and open-source community. We're structured like the architecture we're building: open, modular, and built for composability.
Meta Layer
Community-driven governance. Public-good licensing and stewardship.
Math Layer
Prime-based semantic algebra. A new way to model composition and traceability.
Internet Protocols
Tools and standards for referencing, syncing, and resolving data across domains.
Neural Framework (PrimeOS)
A privacy-safe, explainable compute layer built on UOR semantics—no black boxes.
PrimeApp SDK
A developer toolkit for packaging and deploying semantically-aware applications (think docker build, but for meaning).
Each layer unlocks the next—allowing anyone to build systems where data retains meaning and computation becomes trustworthy by design.
What We Imagine
We see a future where:
- Everyone owns their data
- AI models reference knowledge instead of guessing
- Systems can work together across silos
- Software is built with modularity, transparency, and context at its core
- And anyone, anywhere, can use information to learn, build, and dream freely
UOR is here to help make that world possible.
Industry Applications
Industry Applications
Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Systems
Problem
Modern AI models like LLMs and neural networks are not inherently interpretable or modular. They struggle with long-term reasoning, context tracking, and aligning outputs with structured logic or verified knowledge.
UOR Solution
UOR encodes knowledge using identifiable units (Handles), structured containers (Codex), and controlled logic flows (Cortex). This architecture allows AI systems to evolve understanding step-by-step, validate intermediate conclusions, and reason through transparent circuits — supporting hybrid symbolic-connectionist systems with deep traceability.
What's Already Happening
UOR is already powering breakthroughs in:
Healthcare
Secure, traceable medical data exchange
AI
Grounding models in provenance and semantic clarity
Edge & Defense
Enabling trusted computation in disconnected environments
Open Source
Helping developers build reusable, interoperable software artifacts
Want to Help Build It?
If you believe in data ownership, free access to knowledge, and an internet that works for people, not just platforms—we'd love to work with you.
We're a movement of:
- Engineers
- Researchers
- Policymakers
- Open-source contributors
- Builders with bold ideas and deep questions