DeepFates and lfschiavo Launch Grove Research to Study Agent Ecology
On August 25, Larissa Schiavo (lfschiavo) and DeepFates announced the founding of Grove Research, a new research institute focused on the ecology and emergent behavior of multi-agent populations in real-world environments — so-called "agent ecology." The founders detailed their vision across livestreams and interviews, with DeepFates saying he decided to drop his anonymity in order to "save reality."
Confirmed
- The company was co-founded by DeepFates and lfschiavo; lfschiavo previously worked at DeepMind (some posts describe her as a former Anthropic/DeepMind employee, with inconsistent wording across sources). Grove Research is set up as a public benefit company.
- Its research focus is multi-agent dynamics and "agent ecology": the relationships and emergent behaviors of agents in real, open ("wild") environments — an area that remains under-theorized and under-explored.
- In interviews, the founders discussed lessons from the Hugging Face incident for multi-agent dynamics, what defines an agent-ecology company, and the difference between Darwinian competition in real ecosystems and the complexity of forest metaphors such as mycorrhizal networks.
- They noted that roughly 30% of benchmark tasks remain unsolvable, highlighting current agent capability limits; the earlier "bot swarm" incident that drew little attention was another motivation for founding the company.
- Beyond the August 25 announcement, lfschiavo previewed a livestream on August 26 at 10:15 local time with further details.
Why it matters
- As AI agents are deployed at scale, interactions and ecosystem-level dynamics — rather than single-agent capabilities — are becoming a new research gap; Grove Research is one of the first institutes explicitly dedicated to it.
- Real incidents such as the Hugging Face event provide concrete cases for multi-agent risk and governance, and the institute may help systematize research in this direction.
2026-08-25 ~ 2026-08-26 · 9 related posts
Primary sources
- [source] Ex-DeepMind members launch Grove Research focused on agent ecology — lfschiavo · 2026-08-25
- New Research Lab Grove Research Focuses on AI Agents in the Wild — lfschiavo · 2026-08-25
- Grove Research focuses on multi-agent dynamics; founders coming out of anonymity — lfschiavo · 2026-08-25
- Grove Research Founders Discuss Hugging Face Incident and Multi-Agent Dynamics — Miles_Brundage · 2026-08-25
- Grove Research Founders on Agent Ecology and AI Control Risks — maxisawesome538 · 2026-08-25
- [source] Ex-Anthropic employee founds Grove Research to study multi-agent ecologies — lfschiavo · 2026-08-26
- [source] Grove Research founded to address real-world agent behavior challenges — lfschiavo · 2026-08-26
- Grove Research Founded by lfschiavo and deepfates, Focuses on Agent Ecology — lfschiavo · 2026-08-26
1 near-duplicate retellings: lfschiavo