On 20 January 2025, Glimt opened to the public. It is a crowd-forecasting platform run by FOI, the Swedish Defence Research Agency, and FOI says it was developed in collaboration with the Ukrainian government. Volunteers estimate the probability of events that Ukrainian analysts care about, and the combined forecasts help Ukraine adapt and prepare its defence. Hypermind supplies the forecasting technology.
That afternoon, Émile Servan-Schreiber, Hypermind’s CEO, posted that the competition was “open to the world” and described it as a concrete way for anyone to support Ukraine. He listed three of the opening questions: how many missiles Russia would launch against Ukraine in February 2025, whether mass protests against the war would take place in Russia in 2025, and when Russia would regain full access to its frozen foreign-exchange reserves.
A glimpse from many directions
In Swedish, “glimt” means a glimpse, a flash or a sudden insight, the Glimt FAQ explains. The name sums up the method. No single participant sees the whole picture, but many partial views, combined, can show more than any one of them. Ivar Ekman of FOI’s Defence Analysis Department put it this way at the launch:
As an individual, you may only see a glimpse of the whole
Ivar Ekman, FOI
Ekman’s point was that combining perspectives from many directions can reveal more. FOI traces the approach to research by the US intelligence community in the 2010s. In a February 2025 explainer, it wrote that crowd forecasts had in some cases been 30% more accurate than those of analysts with access to classified information. It also pointed to the British government’s own forecasting programme, Cosmic Bazaar. The explainer names Jonas Clausen Mork, deputy research director at FOI, as co-lead of the project.
How the platform works
Each question asks for a probability, for example: “Will Russia use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine in 2025?” The platform combines everyone’s forecasts into one collective estimate and passes it to Ukrainian analysts. According to FOI, users with a better track record rank higher, so experience earns influence.
Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported in March 2025 that the collective estimate is a weighted aggregation rather than a simple average. Some participants count for more than others, depending on how well they have forecast in the past.
- Open to anyone. FOI says no prior experience is needed. Its launch post said it was “looking for understimulated seniors, procrastinating students and night-feeding mothers”.
- Anonymous and free. Participation is anonymous, collects minimal data, and has no adverts. The FAQ says no data is sold and that the platform follows the GDPR.
- Not a combat role. The FAQ also addresses a question many volunteers ask, and says that taking part does not make anyone a combatant.
- Three languages. The platform runs in Swedish, English and French. The FAQ says it is financed as part of Sweden’s support to Ukraine.
The first five weeks
Sign-ups came quickly. A day after launch, Servan-Schreiber wrote that close to 2,000 people had joined. Clausen Mork posted on 22 January that 1,900 forecasters had submitted more than 9,000 forecasts in two days. In February, FOI ran a recruitment campaign in Swedish public transport. Servan-Schreiber shared one of its bus-stop posters, with the line “Our new weapon: you commuting in rush hour”.
The French version was promoted in mid-February. On 24 February 2025, the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Servan-Schreiber wrote that more than 10,000 Swedish, French, American and other volunteers were sharing forecasts and analysis with Ukrainian analysts. A month later, SVT counted more than 16,000 registered users in Sweden and over 70,000 forecasts. Questions by then covered a possible Trump–Putin meeting, a Russian invasion of Georgia, and how long a ceasefire might last.
A year later, on 24 February 2026, he issued another participation call. He said dozens of military, political and economic questions from Ukrainian government analysts were being consolidated into probabilities and regularly delivered to the Ukrainian side. He also wrote that more than 200 of Hypermind’s strongest forecasters were taking part. Those are figures from his update; the public post does not provide a separate performance report for that group.
Hypermind’s part
Hypermind’s company page says its Prescience platform powers Glimt. It describes Prescience as built after the company’s work in a 2017 hybrid-forecasting programme of IARPA, the US intelligence community’s research agency, with Raytheon BBN. FOI owns the project, sets the questions with its Ukrainian partners and delivers the results. Hypermind provides the forecasting engine and the aggregation method.
