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Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

01.ai

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Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#11

Post by alisonatwork »

astrange wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #3

What is up with all of these {number}.ai companies? 01.ai 11.ai https://twelvelabs.io (couldn't get 12.ai, huh?) There are about a half dozen more. I'm laughing at the domain squatter that bought 900.ai, 99999.ai, and 1234567.ai This has to be the worst possible thing to name your company.

Number domains are relatively common in China because you can easily make Chinese language puns with them. (I don't know what this one means, but it probably is one.)

I suppose you can pronounce 01 as 零一 (zero one), but also 另一 (another), so 01.ai could be read as "another AI".

Seem like the Chinese name of the company is 零一万物 which could translate as "Zero One All Things" - not a bad name for a tech company.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#12

Post by dheera »

antupis wrote: post #5
echelon wrote: post #3

What is up with all of these {number}.ai companies? 01.ai 11.ai https://twelvelabs.io (couldn't get 12.ai, huh?) There are about a half dozen more. I'm laughing at the domain squatter that bought 900.ai, 99999.ai, and 1234567.ai This has to be the worst possible thing to name your company.

420.ai, 69.ai or 666.ai are much worse.

In Chinese, 666 is a very good number.

6 sounds like the character 溜 which technically means something like smooth flowing but is used to compliment someone's well-practiced skills.

"666" is often said when someone does something impressive and smoothly. Like if someone double-flips a pancake and it lands perfectly, that's the kind of situation you'd say "666" to compliment them.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#13

Post by TekMol »

How can an open source company have a valuation of $1B?

How do open source businesses work at all? I sometimes read about companies like these, with huge valuations and then the next day I read about some open source developer asking for donations because their project, which powers half of the internet [1], is not making him enough to pay for food. What makes the difference?

Over the years, I wrote some tools for my own use, which are way better than their commercial counterparts. If I would spend a few weeks to polish one of them and open source it, it would probably gain widespread adoption. But how could I then build that into a business?

[1] Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#15

Post by lgeorget »

TekMol wrote: post #13

How can an open source company have a valuation of $1B? How do open source businesses work at all? I sometimes read about companies like these, with huge valuations and then the next day I read about some open source developer asking for donations because their project, which powers half of the internet [1], is not making him enough to pay for food. What makes the difference? Over the years, I wrote some tools for my…

Not all projects are "business-able" I think. A nice tool with an identifiable user base, a nice UI, etc. is easier to market than a NTP library even if the latter has more probability to be critical and to get installed in billions of devices.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#16

Post by blackoil »

TekMol wrote: post #13

How can an open source company have a valuation of $1B? How do open source businesses work at all? I sometimes read about companies like these, with huge valuations and then the next day I read about some open source developer asking for donations because their project, which powers half of the internet [1], is not making him enough to pay for food. What makes the difference? Over the years, I wrote some tools for my…

Very common way: Go Open Core, sell hosting and plugins and proprietary engines etc and if that's not enough do a coup and change license to prevent competition from providing same services.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#17

Post by mmahemoff »

throwaway4good wrote: post #8
echelon wrote: post #3

What is up with all of these {number}.ai companies? 01.ai 11.ai https://twelvelabs.io (couldn't get 12.ai, huh?) There are about a half dozen more. I'm laughing at the domain squatter that bought 900.ai, 99999.ai, and 1234567.ai This has to be the worst possible thing to name your company.

Number domain names seem to be popular in countries that don’t use the latin alphabet - ie China or Japan. 01.ai is pretty cool name and domain … for sure beats grok or calling something open when it is actually closed.

China and Japan also have numerical stock tickers, e.g. Sony's ticker 6758 instead of e.g. SONY.

I guess numeric IDs like that were a consequence of early tech making it hard to deal with more complex character sets ... maybe the association lives on in those cultures?

There's also deeper associations with numbers like 8 representing luck, 4 meaning death etc.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#18

Post by flarion »

TekMol wrote: post #13

How can an open source company have a valuation of $1B? How do open source businesses work at all? I sometimes read about companies like these, with huge valuations and then the next day I read about some open source developer asking for donations because their project, which powers half of the internet [1], is not making him enough to pay for food. What makes the difference? Over the years, I wrote some tools for my…

like any other startup. time, energy and passion. define problem/pain. talk loads w potential customers. ask them if they would pay for it. excel in customer success. find ways to scale and be found :)

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#19

Post by Conscat »

> We predict that AI 2.0 will create a platform opportunity ten times larger than the mobile internet, rewriting all software and user interfaces.

I was a bit interested until I read this. If this claim is to be believed, then the company appears to be entirely out of touch with reality, and it makes claims like outperforming llama-70b seem even more incredulous.

Re: Kai Fu Lee's New AI Company: Yi-Open Source

#20

Post by bman_kg »

TekMol wrote: post #13

How can an open source company have a valuation of $1B? How do open source businesses work at all? I sometimes read about companies like these, with huge valuations and then the next day I read about some open source developer asking for donations because their project, which powers half of the internet [1], is not making him enough to pay for food. What makes the difference? Over the years, I wrote some tools for my…

the visual you linked makes perfect sense, wonder how many companies are like that...
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