The Digital Currency Initiative describes itself as founded in 2015 as the first university group focused on Bitcoin, expanded in 2016 to other protocols and central bank digital currencies, and housed at the MIT Media Lab. That last detail is the structural fact: the DCI is a research group inside a university, not a separate legal entity, so there is no incorporation to record and no jurisdiction field to fill.
It was set up at a moment when several Bitcoin Core contributors were employed by companies with a commercial interest in protocol decisions, and a university offered a different kind of employer. The people page lists Cory Fields as a Bitcoin Core developer at the DCI since its formation in 2015, with contributions across the peer-to-peer implementation, the validation engine, the build system and the deterministic build process. The group states that it supports long-term research and provides a home for Bitcoin Core developers working on protocol security, performance and stability, work it groups under a Bitcoin Security Initiative.
The second half of the work is the part people forget. The DCI has published on central bank digital currency design, including the Project Hamilton work with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and more recently on public blockchains and regulated financial institutions and on stablecoin regulation in African markets. Neha Narula, its director, has argued publicly that central bank digital currencies and stablecoins differ less than most people assume.
The group states that all of its research, code, publications and data are made freely available, and that it undertakes research independent of any specific technology, product or organisation. Its funding comes from donations, which it does not itemise on the site.