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v2026.11,858 entries · CC-BY 4.0
NIKOLAI elementN1 · Actors, models and scopeProposednikolai-v0.1

Developer

NIKOLAI proposal (unsourced): the legal person responsible for developing a model or publishing a safety artefact, identified per jurisdiction. Because at least one source (OpenAI) shows one developer holding different legal roles in different jurisdictions for the same model family, NIKOLAI should model this as a compound key of developer × jurisdiction × legal-role rather than a single flat developer field.

This is CASRAI's own proposed definition, not a definition any named organisation has agreed to. See what NIKOLAI is and is not.

Source of record

Where this definition comes from

  • California SB 53, 22757.11(h), (j), (a)

    "Frontier developer": "a person who has trained, or initiated the training of, a frontier model..." (22757.11(h)); "Large frontier developer": "a frontier developer that together with its affiliates collectively had annual gross revenues in excess of five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) in the preceding calendar year" (22757.11(j)).

    https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53

Crosswalk

How named organisations use this concept

Every row below is a shadow mapping. A shadow row is CASRAI's own reading of a published document. No lab, evaluator or regulator named on a shadow row has declared, endorsed, or been consulted on it. That changes only when an organisation files its own Mapping Declaration.
OrganisationTheir term, as publishedMatch & verificationSource
AnthropicShadow mapping
Advanced AI Framework / Risk Report
"Covered Developer": developers that "Develop AI models requiring more than 10^25 training FLOP" and "Earn more than $500 million ... in annual AI-derived revenue, or spend more than $1 billion per year on AI research and development" (AAF p.3). The Risk Report has no developer field and describes its scope as "a risk assessment of Anthropic's activities as a whole" (§1).
Secondary citation {RR} (Anthropic Risk Report) confirms the report itself carries no developer field at all; the AAF definition is a separate, not-yet-enacted legislative proposal.
closeCL
confidence: medium
Anthropic Advanced AI Framework, legislative proposal
OpenAIShadow mapping
Frontier Governance Framework
Jurisdiction-specific entities: "OpenAI OpCo LLC is responsible for compliance with the TFAIA for covered models in the United States"; "OpenAI Ireland Limited is the provider of OpenAI's GPAI-SR models in the EU" (FGF §6, p.18).narrowNR
confidence: high
OpenAI Frontier Governance Framework
xAIShadow mapping
Frontier AI Framework / Grok 4.6 model card
"xAI LLC ('xAI')" (FAIF s.1). The Grok 4.6 card adds: "SpaceXAI is a doing-business-as (DBA) name of XAI LLC. xAI and SpaceXAI may be used interchangeably throughout this card." (§1 fn, p.5).
This source's PDF metadata /Title reads "Privileged/Confidential DRAFT working FRAMEWORK DOC"; no xAI statement disambiguating draft vs. final status was found (open [VERIFY] item in the source document's register).
closeCL
confidence: medium
xAI Frontier AI Framework, 30 Jun 2026
EUShadow mapping
Safety and Security chapter
"Providers of general-purpose AI models with systemic risk" can rely on the Safety and Security chapter (Commission landing page). The legal definition of "provider" itself is in the AI Act, which the source document did not fetch for this row.
Secondary citation tag {DEU} in the source document does not resolve to any URL in the provided sources table (distinct from the {DEV} discovery-sweep tag); treated here as unverified pending resolution.
closeCL
confidence: low
EU Commission GPAI Code of Practice landing page
California SB 53Shadow mapping
SB 53 statute text
"Frontier developer": "a person who has trained, or initiated the training of, a frontier model..." (22757.11(h)); "Large frontier developer": "a frontier developer that together with its affiliates collectively had annual gross revenues in excess of five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) in the preceding calendar year" (22757.11(j)). Also "Affiliate" (22757.11(a)).exactEQ
confidence: high
California SB 53
Demis Hassabis (personal essay)Shadow mapping
"A framework for frontier AI" essay
"Organisations with 'Frontier Models' as defined by those benchmarks would be deemed 'Frontier Labs'" (§Framework ¶2).
Personal essay, not an official DeepMind policy document.
closeCL
confidence: medium
Demis Hassabis, "A framework for frontier AI and the dawning of a new age"
New York (RAISE Act, S8828)Shadow mapping
NY RAISE Act bill text
Keeps the SB 53 developer tiers (para.).closeCL
confidence: medium
NY RAISE Act (S8828)
AmazonShadow mapping
Amazon's Frontier Model Safety Framework
No defined-term "developer" class; the Framework speaks in the first person ("Amazon") throughout and commits that "we will not deploy frontier AI models developed by Amazon that exceed specified risk thresholds without appropriate safeguards in place" (preamble, p.1).
The source document itself also lists Amazon among sources with "no developer term found" elsewhere in the same row's discussion (line 160: "Amazon (first-person only, no defined term)") -- a genuine internal inconsistency in the source, not an extraction error. The CL score reflects the first-person commitment language quoted in the bundled 'Other' row, not a formal defined term.
closeCL
confidence: low
Amazon's Frontier Model Safety Framework
What do these codes mean?
exact
The source term is equivalent to this element
close
The source term is close but not equivalent to this element
broad
The source term is broader than this element
narrow
The source term is narrower than this element
none
No mapping claim — used for false-friend and declared-but-undefined rows
EQ
Equivalent
CL
Close
BR
Source is broader than the element
NR
Source is narrower than the element
FF
False friend — same or similar label, different meaning
DU
Declared but undefined by the source
UV
Unverified

Gap

The SB 53 and FGF pattern (legal entity per jurisdiction) is the only one that supports attribution. The FGF also shows one developer holding different legal roles in different jurisdictions, so NIKOLAI needs `developer` x `jurisdiction` x `legal-role` rather than a single developer field.

Referenced across the research world

University of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoCrossref logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoORCID logoUniversity of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoCrossref logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoORCID logo
  • University of Cambridge logo
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  • University of Edinburgh logo
  • Harvard University logo
  • University of Oxford logo
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  • Stanford School of Medicine logo
  • University College London logo
  • ORCID logo

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