Praxis

Praxis is a New York-based startup that has spent years building an online community around the idea of founding a new city, and has now selected Uruguay for its first physical settlement, with plans to welcome initial residents by mid-2027 . The launch marks the moment the project moves from a "digital nation" concept into physical construction, with the first phase rising at +Colonia, a new city taking shape beside Colonia del Sacramento , an established waterfront development backed by Argentine entrepreneur Eduardo Bastitta and reachable by a short ferry from Buenos Aires. The company was founded in 2019 by Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, with Howard Hughes Corporation founder David Weinreb serving as Vice Chairman . Praxis is pitching the development to founders, investors, and operators as a place designed for a world reshaped by AI, planning to mobilize $1 billion in investment over three years and pairing homes with hospitality, infrastructure, and spaces for cultural and commercial activity . The stated ambition, in Brown's framing, is to channel wealth created by artificial general intelligence into lasting places and institutions . This launch matters now because it puts a specific site, timeline, and capital plan behind a category (charter cities and network states) that has largely lived in essays and Twitter threads. With coverage in The New York Times and construction underway on prefab residences at the +Colonia site, Praxis becomes one of the first well-funded attempts to test whether a tech-native community can actually be built from the ground up on the Rio de la Plata coast, rather than only imagined online.