Prospective Interview Target Universe

Field	Value
Project	CPC-26-0016 - Where the Story Holds: AI Commercial Positioning for Cardano
Baseline date	10 September 2026
Planned completed interviews	15–25 across the core engagement
Prospective organisations	50
Status	Recruitment and substitution pool; participation not implied

How to read this list

This organisation-level longlist makes the Milestone 1 interview plan actionable while protecting individual privacy. Confirmed target means that the project has fixed the organisation as part of the initial recruitment universe; it does not mean that the organisation or any individual has agreed to participate.

• No personal names, email addresses, consent records or outreach status are published here.
• Individual identities and participation status are maintained in a controlled respondent log.
• Inclusion does not imply participation, endorsement or a commitment to interview all 50 organisations.
• The longlist is approximately twice the maximum intended sample, providing substitutions for non-response without activating the excluded extended-interview add-on.
• Visa and Kaleido are excluded from outreach at this stage. Visa may still appear in the separate public-source register as a comparison source; source review is not respondent outreach.
• Interviews will begin with the respondent's problems, existing controls and decision criteria. Cardano will not be presented as the assumed solution.

Intended realised-sample balance

Segment	Prospective pool	Intended completed interviews
Institutional buyers and adopters	16	4–7
AI-agent builders and platforms	8	2–4
Payments and commerce infrastructure	8	2–4
Cardano ecosystem and operators	7	3–4
Non-Cardano comparison cases	6	2–3
Standards, identity, security and assurance	5	2–3
Total	50	15–25

The realised sample will depend on relevance, consent, availability and evidence saturation. Cardano-connected respondents will not dominate the sample, and material provider claims will be checked against independent evidence where possible.

1. Institutional buyers and adopters

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
1	Booking.com / Booking Holdings	AI product, payments, fraud, risk or marketplace operations	Test delegated purchasing, confirmation evidence, cancellations, refunds, disputes, integration cost and measurable demand in multi-provider travel.
2	DTCC	Digital assets, enterprise AI, operational risk or settlement product	Test control and evidence thresholds, legal finality, exception handling, privacy and whether existing shared infrastructure is sufficient.
3	Euroclear	Digital assets, settlement operations, innovation or operational risk	Test authority and approval requirements, acceptable audit records, correction, reversal, interoperability and adoption barriers.
4	JPMorgan Chase	AI governance, payments, treasury services, procurement or third-party risk	Test delegated-spend controls, decision ownership, incident evidence, vendor requirements, budget and adoption criteria.
5	A.P. Moller–Maersk	Logistics technology, procurement, trade digitisation or operational automation	Test service-completion evidence, authority across parties, exception costs, disputes and the value of a shared record.
6	Siemens	Industrial AI, automation, procurement, cybersecurity or digital platforms	Test autonomous-action limits, machine identity, approval, revocation, latency, availability, liability and audit needs.
7	Standard Chartered	Transaction banking, AI governance, digital assets, payments or compliance	Test credible workflows, legal authorisation, compliance evidence, privacy, settlement, disputes and procurement thresholds.
8	Walmart	Digital commerce, AI product, payments, merchant risk or fraud	Test customer demand, intent capture, fraud allocation, returns, chargebacks, merchant control and conversion economics.
9	Allianz	Enterprise AI, insurance operations, claims, risk or procurement	Test authority for claims and service actions, evidentiary requirements, human escalation, liability and buying criteria.
10	AXA	Digital product, claims automation, AI governance, fraud or compliance	Test where autonomous decisions require proof, correction, privacy, accountability and regulated oversight.
11	Bosch	Industrial AI, connected products, IoT security or procurement	Test machine identity, device-to-service transactions, operational evidence, permissions, security and lifecycle management.
12	DHL Group	Logistics technology, supply-chain platforms, procurement or automation	Test cross-party hand-offs, proof of service, exceptions, micropayments, disputes and integration with current systems.
13	Roche	Digital health, clinical operations, data governance, AI risk or procurement	Test high-assurance identity, provenance, privacy, accountability and whether shared infrastructure is acceptable in regulated health workflows.
14	Schneider Electric	Industrial automation, energy management, digital platforms or cybersecurity	Test machine-led service procurement, authority boundaries, metering, settlement, reliability and auditability.
15	Vodafone Group	IoT product, network automation, identity, billing or enterprise innovation	Test device and agent identity, delegated authority, usage charging, cross-party evidence and operational scale requirements.
16	BMW Group	Manufacturing AI, connected mobility, procurement or cybersecurity	Test machine-to-service workflows, supplier coordination, approval, evidence, liability, privacy and production-readiness thresholds.

2. AI-agent builders and platforms

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
17	Anthropic	Agent tooling, Model Context Protocol, product security or trust	Test authentication, least authority, credential delegation, revocation, provenance, common failures and where transactional evidence should reside.
18	Amazon Web Services	Bedrock Agents, identity, cloud security or enterprise adoption	Test enterprise policy enforcement, identity, secrets, observability, recovery, performance and adoption barriers.
19	CrewAI	Multi-agent runtime, enterprise product or applied engineering	Test delegation between agents, hand-off records, completion criteria, approval boundaries, recovery and implementation effort.
20	IBM	Agent orchestration, AI governance, integration or enterprise adoption	Test ownership, permissions, monitoring, incident response, client evidence requirements, procurement and monetisation barriers.
21	LangChain	Agent runtime, tracing, evaluation or applied-agent engineering	Test whether traces, checkpoints, retries and compensating actions already provide sufficient operational evidence.
22	Microsoft	Agent framework, enterprise identity, governance or responsible AI	Test enterprise identity, approvals, delegated authority, policy enforcement, audit records, escalation and third-party-agent risk.
23	OpenAI	Agent platform, commerce, safety, security or evaluations	Test confirmation boundaries, delegated scope, execution records, merchant hand-off, failure, refund and compensation patterns.
24	Salesforce	Agent platform, commerce, trust, observability or customer workflows	Test purchase authority, outcome records, autonomous-action limits, disputed outcomes, escalation and adoption economics.

3. Payments and commerce infrastructure

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
25	Circle	Stablecoin infrastructure, programmable wallets, compliance or developer platform	Test wallet policy, spend limits, finality, liquidity, compliance, cross-network operation, recovery and low-value-payment economics.
26	Coinbase Developer Platform / x402	Machine-payment protocol, wallet, facilitator or protocol security	Test production use, facilitator trust, authorisation, retries, replay protection, settlement evidence, refunds and chain-selection criteria.
27	Crossmint	Agentic payments, programmable wallets, cards or compliance	Test agent funding, permissions, custody, identity checks, rail abstraction, transaction records, recovery and merchant reach.
28	Google / Agent Payments Protocol	Agent-payment protocol, commerce, payments or identity mandates	Test mandate creation, scope, revocation, evidence chains, privacy, liability, disputes and adoption gates.
29	Mastercard	Agent payments, digital identity, fraud, tokenisation or disputes	Test trusted-agent registration, mandate limits, issuer and merchant signals, fraud allocation, chargebacks and consumer control.
30	Nevermined	Agent payments, access control, metering or protocol product	Test usage and outcome pricing, delivery evidence, access revocation, non-delivery handling, unit economics and repeat demand.
31	Shopify	AI commerce, checkout, merchant platform or order operations	Test machine-readable offers, merchant control, order-state and fulfilment evidence, returns, support burden and adoption cost.
32	Stripe / Agentic Commerce Protocol	Agentic commerce, payments risk, protocol or merchant product	Test merchant adoption, authorisation hand-off, checkout semantics, fulfilment, refunds, fraud, integration and economics.

4. Cardano ecosystem and operators

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
33	Cardano Foundation	Enterprise adoption, solutions or developer ecosystem	Test inspectable adoption signals, client requirements, ecosystem gaps, failed approaches and where shared-ledger evidence adds value.
34	EMURGO	Commercial adoption, fintech product, investment or ecosystem development	Test pipeline patterns, integration friction, liquidity, on-ramp needs, willingness to pay and reasons projects choose or reject the stack.
35	GriffinAI	Agent product, protocol engineering, partnerships or operations	Test live usage, responsibility and approval boundaries, outcome evidence, failures, network-selection criteria and repeat demand.
36	Input Output Group	Protocol research, core engineering, scaling or product strategy	Test inspectable technical artifacts, performance and cost envelopes, concurrency, assurance scope, dependencies and failure conditions.
37	Masumi Network	Agent-payment protocol, product, engineering or network operations	Test usage with denominators, repeat demand, payment values, delivery confirmation, refunds, disputes, latency, fees and interoperability.
38	Midnight Foundation	Privacy engineering, product, developer adoption or integrations	Test privacy needs, selective disclosure, proof cost, latency, integration complexity, regulation and boundaries relative to Cardano L1.
39	TxPipe	Transaction engineering, UTXO infrastructure, security audit or developer tooling	Test contention, throughput, submission, retries, observability, audit scope, operational bottlenecks and residual risk.

5. Non-Cardano comparison cases

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
40	Akash Network / Overclock Labs	Compute marketplace, protocol engineering or ecosystem product	Test buyer demand, supply quality, workload verification, pricing, utilisation, settlement and whether decentralisation is necessary.
41	Artificial Superintelligence Alliance / Fetch.ai	Agent marketplace, discovery, identity or protocol engineering	Test agent identity, discovery, authority, message and payment verification, service completion, monetisation and production adoption.
42	Olas / Valory	Autonomous-service marketplace, protocol engineering or economics	Test task specification, output validation, pricing, incentives, non-delivery remedies, custody, reputation and network trade-offs.
43	OpenTensor Foundation / Bittensor	Intelligence markets, subnet economics or ecosystem operations	Test buyer and developer demand, quality measurement, incentives, concentration, commercial use and competitive barriers.
44	Solana Foundation	AI ecosystem, payments, developer growth or protocol integrations	Test workload requirements, fees, latency, finality, liquidity, production activity, developer experience and distribution.
45	Temporal Technologies	Durable execution, workflow reliability or product	Test which state, retry, audit and compensation needs conventional workflow systems already meet, and where a neutral layer remains necessary.

6. Standards, identity, security and assurance

#	Organisation	Generic target function	Why included and evidence sought
46	Agentic AI Foundation, Linux Foundation	Protocol governance, interoperability or security	Test protocol boundaries, identity and authorisation gaps, conformance, lifecycle evidence, security responsibilities and standards direction.
47	National Institute of Standards and Technology	AI risk, digital identity, cybersecurity or measurement science	Test minimum control and measurement baselines, identity assurance, audit evidence, privacy, risk ownership and claim testability.
48	OpenID Foundation	Identity, delegated authorisation, credentials or security standards	Test principal and agent identity, delegation, policy decisions, consent, revocation, credential portability and conformance gaps.
49	OWASP GenAI Security Project	Agent threat modelling, controls, governance or technical security	Test credential and payment threats, confused-deputy risk, least authority, prompt injection, logging, provenance and recovery.
50	Runtime Verification	Formal methods, runtime assurance, protocol security or policy guardrails	Test what can be specified, proven or monitored, the trusted computing base, proof cost, residual model risk and when a ledger is irrelevant.

Recruitment and evidence controls

• Respondents will receive a neutral study introduction and may choose a conversation or written response.
• Participation, attribution and recording require consent; non-participation will not be disclosed.
• Questions will seek concrete examples, evidence and counterexamples rather than agreement with a proposed Cardano narrative.
• Vendor and Cardano-connected statements will be marked as such until independently corroborated.
• The Milestone 2 interview log will report realised coverage and evidence status without exposing confidential personal information.