About
About

Homebrew Computer Company

Eniac Eniac (opens in a new tab), the World's First Computer (Photo courtesy of US Army)

About

We're a team of AI researchers and engineers. We are the creators and lead maintainers of a few open-source AI tools:

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The Homebrew Computer Club (opens in a new tab) was an early computer hobbyist group from 1975 to 1986 that led to Apple and the personal computer revolution.

Mission

We're a robotics company that focuses on the cognitive framework for future robots. Our long-term mission is to advance human-machine collaboration to enable human civilization to thrive.

Business Model

We're currently a bootstrapped startup 1. We balance technical invention with the search for a sustainable business model (e.g., consulting, paid support, and custom development).

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We welcome business inquiries: 👋 [email protected]

Community

We have a thriving community built around Jan, where we also discuss our other projects.

Philosophy

Homebrew is an opinionated company with a clear philosophy for the products we build:

🔑 User Owned

We build tools that are user-owned. Our products are open-source (opens in a new tab), designed to run offline or be self-hosted (opens in a new tab). We make no attempt to lock you in, and our tools are free of user-hostile dark patterns (opens in a new tab) 2.

We adopt Local-first (opens in a new tab) principles and store data locally in universal file formats (opens in a new tab). We build for privacy by default, and we do not collect or sell your data.

🔧 Right to Tinker

We believe in the Right to Repair (opens in a new tab). We encourage our users to take it further by tinkering, extending, and customizing (opens in a new tab) our products to fit their needs.

Our products are designed with Extension APIs, and we do our best to write good documentation so users understand how things work under the hood.

👫 Build with the Community

We are part of a larger open-source community and are committed to being a good jigsaw puzzle piece. We credit and actively contribute to upstream projects.

We adopt a public-by-default approach to Project Management (opens in a new tab), Roadmaps (opens in a new tab), and Helpdesk for our products.

Inspirations

Good artists borrow, great artists steal - Picasso

We are inspired by and actively try to emulate the paths of companies we admire ❤️:

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. The Market for AI Companies (opens in a new tab) by Finbarr Timbers ↩

  2. Kaparthy's Love Letter to Obsidian (opens in a new tab) ↩

Team