rabbit inc. Raises Additional $10 Million to Launch First AI Hardware to Replace App-based Operating Systems

After announcing its $20M fundraising in October, rabbit has closed its Series A round led by Khosla Ventures to accelerate the development of rabbit’s Large Action Model (LAM) and the upcoming device powered by LAM.

rabbit inc.–an AI startup building the future of human-machine interface — announced that it has raised a $10-million Series A round led by existing investor Khosla Ventures, bringing its total funding to $30 million.

rabbit will use the new funds to expand its headcount and rapidly develop its first standalone hardware – r1 – powered by rabbit OS, an operating system built on its proprietary foundation model, Large Action Model (LAM). The r1 device and rabbit OS will be officially unveiled on January 9, 2024 in an online launch event on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2024) in Las Vegas.

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“Throughout history, humans have always tried to create more intuitive tools,” said rabbit Founder and CEO Jesse Lyu. “The current app-based operating system has been around for many years, but the way we interact with it – downloading hundreds of apps, fumbling through multiple pages and folders to find the app you want to use, requiring developers to tailor all these apps to various operating systems – has always been disjointed and cumbersome. The Large Action Model is the missing piece that will bring about a vastly improved way for humans to interact with technology and get things done faster than ever before.”

First introduced in October, Large Action Model (LAM) both understands and acts upon human intentions in ways that Large Language Model-based programs like ChatGPT cannot. Unlike generative AI chatbots, LAM accomplishes tasks without the need for bespoke integrations like Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). LAM is designed to act on consumer applications, giving users the ability to accomplish tasks like booking tickets and ordering groceries from start to finish, in the same way that humans would do it.

“We dedicated a significant amount of the initial research effort on learning app interfaces and how humans interact with them. That is how the Large Action Model (LAM) was born,” Lyu explained. “Our operating system, rabbit OS, powered by LAM, understands your intentions, automatically conducts research, operates various computer apps through interfaces, compiles and presents information, and ultimately accomplishes tasks for you.”

To let LAM perform at its best, rabbit has created a first-of-its-kind mobile device loaded with rabbit OS that lets people use intuitive input methods to accomplish tasks in a tangible way. The new standalone device – r1 – eliminates the need for users to navigate multiple apps by having a LAM-powered AI operate the apps for them. The industrial design is co-developed by rabbit and Swedish company Teenage Engineering, one of the world’s leading innovators best known for its award-winning synthesizers and audio equipment.

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Moreover, rabbit OS performs all tasks without the need for users to manually create new accounts or pay for additional subscriptions for those apps to access them in rabbit OS, providing a safe, secure and responsible way to accomplish more.

“LAM breaks the boundaries of existing app interfaces,” says rabbit CTO Alexander Liao, formerly a Carnegie Mellon researcher specializing in machine learning. “Our technologies have enabled us to intelligently analyze information and take actions across multiple isolated apps in response to a natural language request, a feat that is rarely possible in existing operating systems. By utilizing neuro-symbolic techniques in the loop, it sits at the forefront of interdisciplinary scientific research in language modeling, programming languages, and formal methods,” explained Liao.

“In a decade, we could have tens of billions more agents than people on the planet running around the net doing things on our behalf,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “The rabbit team is bringing powerful new consumer experiences for every human to have an agent in their pocket.”

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Headquartered in Los Angeles, rabbit was founded by a group of top-ranking Kaggle Grandmasters, ex-Google engineers and repeat-entrepreneurs with extensive experience in creating AI hardware and operating high-performance computing clusters. A two-time Y Combinator alumnus, rabbit’s Founder and CEO, Jesse Lyu, previously founded Raven Tech, a startup that pioneered conversational AI operating systems and was acquired by Baidu.

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