Internet Archive Canada has signed on as the founding sponsor of Futureproof Festival 2026.
They are the first, and that is worth saying plainly. We have spent the better part of a year asking people to take a bet on a room that did not exist yet. Internet Archive Canada is the first organization to put its name behind it.
The fit is not an accident. Futureproof spends three days on who gets to build with AI and who gets left out, and most of that comes back to a plainer question: who holds the public record, and who is allowed to build on it. Internet Archive Canada has been a Canadian independent digital library since 2006, and it answers that question in the most literal way available, by digitizing Canadian collections and putting them somewhere anyone can reach them.
They already back the AI Builders Fellowship with BC + AI. Two builders are spending six weeks turning the Government Publications collection, a large and uneven record of what Canadian governments chose to publish, into open-source work. The fellowship brief has the shape of it, and Internet Archive Canada wrote up the launch from their side.
Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, is already on the festival program for October 28. His talk is called What a Library Owes the People Who Aren't Born Yet, which is more or less the question this whole sponsorship is about.
More sponsor positions are open for 2026. If your organization wants to stand behind this room, the sponsor page lays out what each one includes and who you would be standing next to. If you would rather just be in the room, passes are here.
Auditorium photo: Michelle Diamond.