Praxis (proposed city)
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| Predecessor | Bluebook Cities |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2019 |
| Founder | Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan |
| Headquarters | New York, NY |
Key people | David Weinreb |
| Website | praxisnation |
Praxis is a company founded by Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, with Howard Hughes Corporation founder David Weinreb as Vice Chairman. Praxis describes itself as an "internet-native nation",[1] and has stated plans to create a 10,000 population city in the Mediterranean.[2][3] Brown has not determined the location of the city[2] and the company's vision has been called unrealistic.[4]
As of January 2026, Praxis states that it has 151,068 citizens, from 80 different countries and that companies founded by Praxis members have an aggregate valuation of $1,117 billion.[1]
Although original Praxis plans included development in the Mediterranean, the company has explored Greenland as a site.[5] In November 2024, Zetland reported that Brown had traveled to Greenland and spoken with Greenlandic politicians about the project, e.g. Pele Broberg.[6]
Founders and formation
Dryden Brown was raised in Santa Barbara, California and was homeschooled in order to pursue competitive surfing. He stated that as a high schooler, he studied Ayn Rand and Austrian economists, and when he applied for college, he limited his applications to Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge. He was rejected by them all and he attended New York University before dropping out. Before founding Praxis, Brown worked as an analyst for a hedge fund, where he met Praxis co-founder Charlie Callinan, a former Boston College wide receiver. Brown was fired from the hedge fund. In 2019, Brown and Callinan used money Callinan won in a golf tournament to travel to Nigeria and Ghana, where they met with Ghana's Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and proposed building a financial center.[2] In 2019, a conversation while surfing in Puerto Rico inspired Callinan and Brown to establish a company called Bluebook Cities.[7]
The New York Times writes that Praxis founder Dryden Brown "isn’t a charismatic speaker or an accomplished businessman" and that he is "big on promises and light on specifics".[2] In 2022, Brown told a speechwriter that his inspiration for Praxis came when he saw people looting stores in SoHo during the George Floyd protests.[2] Following the protests, he rented a cabin in Alaska.[2] Brown has lamented the organization of modern cities and their perceived lack of shared values.[7]
A former Praxis employee said Brown's "ideal governance is authoritarian fascism—without religion—and instead the state party is holding everything together."[8] Another former employee described Brown's outlook in the same Mother Jones article: “Dryden very strongly believes there is a natural order. And that there’s a reason why society looks like it does. In his eyes, it’s because God wants it to look that way. He genuinely believed that Black people are not as smart as white people.”
Early investments
A December 2023 report in The New York Times revealed that Brown had raised $19.2 million for Praxis.[2] Praxis’ largest backer is Paradigm Operations. Other investors include Pronomos Capital, backed by Peter Thiel and first led by Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman,[8] as well as venture capitalists Balaji Srinivasan and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, both associates of Peter Thiel. In addition, Praxis received investments from Alameda Research, backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, Apollo Projects, launched by Sam Altman, and Winklevoss Capital Management, the family office of the Winklevoss twins.[2][9]
Praxis loft location
In May 2022, Praxis moved into a large, top-floor office in SoHo where Praxis staff members live and work.[7] The loft is the location of some of Praxis's lavish parties, where Brown attempts to "evoke the salon culture of the Parisian Enlightenment."[2][8] Other parties have occurred in bars and the Yale Club of Manhattan.[10] By 2022, six staff members were living in the Praxis loft.[7] In February 2024, Praxis was sued by the loft owner for failing to pay rent.[11]
Recent scouting and fundraising
In October 2024, Dryden said Praxis had received $525 million in milestone-based financing, and that financing at GEM Digital would become possible after Praxis listed crypto tokens on a public exchange.[9] In April 2025, Bloomberg reported that Praxis CEO Dryden Brown was scouting a location to build, looking for at least 10,000 acres. At that point, the organization had raised around $500 million from investors. The plan entailed building a city "that will offer AI-augmented governance, an environment that will accelerate tech research and employer-friendly labor laws he describes as "Elon-compatible". He outlined a plan to move supporters into 250 to 1000 modular houses, after the host country's support had been secured. Later, it outlined a plan to build a larger city based on a design by Zaha Hadid Architects.[12]
In June 2025, Vanity Fair reported that Brown had stated he had selected a location in California to build Praxis, as a new city named Atlas about an hour north of Santa Barbara. Atlas would be at Vandenberg, according to Brown, which is a US Space Force base with around 3,000 military personnel and their families. Brown described the site as a "Jetsons/pioneer/1950s/space-futurism insane city on federal land. It is a revival of the aesthetic, classical ideas in America. It is a high-testosterone futuristic vision versus the chill, community-oriented one."[13] By December 2025, Atlas was described as a "defence-focused spaceport city". Brown also talked of wanting to establish a non-US city in 2026, as a place for "tech elites" to go to if the US political environment became less tech friendly.[14]
Membership and economy
Brown said the waiting list for the proposed city was 50,000 people long and that 12,000 members were interested in moving starting in 2026. As of April 2024, the group's site states that Praxis has 2,043 members.[1] The Praxis team recruits new members in cities like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Miami and at conventions such as Coachella and Cannes.[7] Membership includes many company founders, including of Worldcoin and Soylent.[2]
