Thinking Machines
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:
- 👋 Jan (opens in a new tab): ChatGPT-alternative that runs 100% offline
- 🤖 Cortex: A simple, embeddable library to run LLMs locally
- More to come!
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.
You can read more about our Vision here.
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).
We welcome business inquiries: 👋 [email protected]
Community
We have a thriving community built around Jan, where we also discuss our other projects.
- Discord (opens in a new tab)
- Twitter (opens in a new tab)
- LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)
- HuggingFace (opens in a new tab)
- Email: [email protected]
Philosophy
Thinking Machines 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 ❤️:
- Posthog (opens in a new tab)
- Obsidian (opens in a new tab)
- Discourse (opens in a new tab)
- Gitlab (opens in a new tab)
- Redhat (opens in a new tab)
- Ghost (opens in a new tab)
- Lago (opens in a new tab)
- Twenty (opens in a new tab)