The best way to explain what the MILAGPT cooperative is — remember how people in the USSR built homes for themselves. No developer, no race for profit — and somehow better quality than the state managed.
"I'm inspired by the practice of cooperative housing construction in the Soviet Union. This approach made it possible to build quality housing for members — without a race for income, for the good of the members themselves."— Shakhruz Ashirov, founder of MILAGPT
In March 1958 the USSR Council of Ministers adopted Resolution No. 320 "On housing construction and dacha construction cooperation" — and Soviet citizens got a legal way to build themselves a flat without waiting decades in the state queue.
The mechanics were simple and fair:
Everyone who lived in the USSR knew it: a "cooperative building" sounded like a mark of quality. Residents of state-built new blocks finished them off themselves — picking up the trades of painter, plasterer and tiler. In cooperative buildings the quality was noticeably higher.
The reason wasn't technology — the buildings were put up by the same construction trusts from the same panels. The reason was incentives:
We're not idealising this. The co-ops' share never exceeded 7–8% of Soviet housing construction (5.9% by the end of the 1980s): by joining a cooperative, a family lost its place in the free state queue, the share wasn't affordable for everyone, and the number of cooperatives was capped by quotas. In Lithuania cooperatives accounted for 15.9% of construction, in Belarus — 13.6%: where there were fewer restrictions, the model immediately showed itself stronger.
The lesson isn't that cooperatives are a niche. The lesson is that even in a rigidly centralised economy, people united in a cooperative built better and with more care — because they were building for themselves.
Cooperative housing isn't Soviet exotica but a working practice around the world. In Zurich — one of the most expensive cities on the planet — more than 18% of households (about 35,000 of 195,000) live in cooperative flats. 141 active housing cooperatives manage more than 42,000 flats, and rents in them are about 20% below market.
The principle is the same as in the Soviet co-ops: a price "at cost" — it covers the land, construction and upkeep but creates no profit for an outside owner. The value stays with the residents.
The MILAGPT analogy, point by point:
| Housing co-op (1958) | MILAGPT cooperative (2026) |
|---|---|
| The building the shareholders live in | The core code and the servers that the AI bot factories run on |
| The share — a contribution for your own flat | The MILA share — a stake in the shared infrastructure |
| A state loan of 70% at 0.5% | A community-sourced contribution: the members' code, work and money |
| Residents accept the building fussily — they'll live there | Factory owners develop the core fussily — their business runs on it |
| Rent at cost, with no developer's margin | Infrastructure at cost; 40% of net profit — dividends to members |
| The building is run by the shareholders' meeting | The cooperative is run by voting: 1 member = 1 vote |
The key difference from a corporate platform is the same as between a housing co-op and a developer: a platform corporation builds to make money off you; a cooperative builds so that things work for you. A corporation can raise prices, close an API, "switch off" your business. In a cooperative the infrastructure belongs to those who work on it.
And one more difference — this time from the co-ops themselves: the Soviet cooperative ran into quotas and bans, while a digital cooperative scales without permission. Code, unlike a panel building, copies for free: every new factory makes the core stronger for everyone.
We're building MILAGPT as a housing co-op for the AI era: the community invests in a shared core — factories of smart assistants, servers, knowledge — and owns it together. Without a race for an outside shareholder's income, for the good of the members. Built to last — because it's built for ourselves.
This is an article from the MILAGPT "Blog" section. Here we take apart the ideas we're building the cooperative on — and sometimes share news. · ← All articles · Home · White Paper
MILAGPT · Tashkent
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