Pre-TX1. The index goes live with Transaction 1. Institutional inquiries welcome today.
The opportunity Why AI labor needs a reference rateA new asset class is being underwritten against a missing benchmark.
AI labor procurement is now a real line item on enterprise P&Ls. Lenders are being asked to price, underwrite, and finance it — without a neutral pricing layer to anchor any of it.
Methodology status
v1.0 public
Versioned, citable, CC-BY-4.0 licensed. Published on GitHub today.
Governance alignment
IOSCO PD415
Built against the IOSCO Principles for Financial Benchmarks. Designed for institutional citation.
Input gate
Pass 0 pre-TX1
Medians are held until the first transaction clears the input gate. The methodology trail is the artifact today.
Categories supported
27 v1
Commodifiable AI labor outputs across CS, sales, doc review, code review, and back-office ops.
Use cases What capital providers do with WLIFour institutional use cases, one underlying methodology.
Each is grounded in the same published WLI rate framework. None requires the live median to be useful today — the methodology trail is the procurement-defensible artifact.
01 · Underwriting
Underwrite AI-labor revenue at the asset level.
Price AI labor outputs as a commodifiable asset class rather than a vendor-specific cash flow. The methodology gives credit risk a defensible per-unit reference to anchor against, instead of accepting the seller’s quoted rate as ground truth.
For Bank credit risk · AI-asset-backed lendersAnchor Per-output WLI category rateToday Methodology trail · pre-TX1
02 · Revenue financing
Anchor revenue-based financing for AI startups.
RBF firms financing AI-labor startups need a category-level reference to test whether contracted rates fall inside or outside the institutional band. The methodology supplies the unit definition; the live basket publishes at TX1.
For Revenue-based financiers · Growth lendersAnchor Category-level WLI basketToday Methodology trail · pre-TX1
03 · Procurement risk
Risk-grade AI labor procurement spend.
Lender CFO and FinOps counterparts can express borrower AI spend in a labor-equivalent unit their own underwriting models already understand. The methodology supplies the unit; the public license makes it citable in covenants.
For Lender FinOps · Borrower credit covenantsAnchor Labor-equivalent unit conversionToday Methodology trail · pre-TX1
04 · Reference rate
Reference rate for AI-asset-backed lending.
As AI-output-backed lending products emerge, an IOSCO-aligned reference rate is the missing primitive. The methodology is built to that standard from day one. The rate becomes citable when TX1 clears the input gate.
For Structured finance · Asset-backed desksAnchor IOSCO PD415-aligned methodologyFuture Live medians post-TX1
Methodology gravitas What sits underneath the rateThree institutional posture choices, made up-front.
Each choice is a deliberate signal to capital providers about the long-term durability of the benchmark. The methodology was built for the regulator-cited century, not the next venture cycle.
01 · Standards alignment
Built against IOSCO PD415.
The published methodology is structured against the IOSCO Principles for Financial Benchmarks. The choice is deliberate: institutional adoption requires institutional standards from the start, not retrofitted later.
Methodology paper →02 · Transaction-anchoring
Tier A inputs only.
The rate is constructed from real, verified transactions clearing the Pass 0 input gate — not surveys, not vendor self-reports. The input definition is published and versioned. Medians are held until the gate clears.
Input gate definition →03 · Open licensing
CC-BY-4.0, public repo.
The methodology is licensed CC-BY-4.0 and lives on a public repository. Any institution — regulator, standards body, lender, auditor — can read, cite, and challenge it without commercial gating.
GitHub repository →Institutional proof The artifacts you can audit todayFour citable artifacts, available pre-TX1.
No held medians. No fabricated institutional commitments. The artifacts below are the institutional posture you can put under a credit memo today.
01 · Methodology paperWLI v1.0 — publicVersioned, citable, structured against IOSCO PD415. The artifact procurement and credit risk reference today. 02 · LicenseCC-BY-4.0Attribution-only. No commercial gate. Built so regulators, standards bodies, and lenders can cite without legal review of terms.
04 · Formal paperarXiv preprint — in preparationFormal methodology write-up routed to arXiv. Status tracked publicly; not yet posted. Cite the public methodology paper in the interim.
Honest framing · pre-TX1
The index goes live with TX1. Until Transaction 1 clears the Pass 0 input gate, the WLI publishes no live medians and no rate prints. We say this on the home page and we say it here.
What exists today is the methodology, the public repository, the CC-BY-4.0 license, and the IOSCO alignment — the institutional posture under which a rate becomes credible. Pre-launch inquiries from capital providers are welcome and the institutional onboarding pipeline is open. We do not publish counts of institutional commitments, named partners, or any data we do not have.
The workforce surfaces Where the methodology livesSix surfaces. One methodology underneath.
Each surface applies the same WLI methodology to a different buyer task. Capital providers typically open the methodology and the index first.
Talk to institutional Pre-TX1The institutional window for AI-labor pricing is open now.
The 12–18 month window before AI labor procurement habits lock into walled gardens is the window in which the neutral pricing layer is set. Capital providers engaging pre-launch shape the input-gate definition, category taxonomy, and reference-rate structure they will later cite in credit memos. We take institutional inquiries directly.