Sigil Wen launched the edge-side private AI Underdog, receiving support from a16z and others

Conway Research founder Sigil Wen announced the launch of Underdog, a private personal AI that can run on users' existing devices. Sigil Wen stated that Underdog has received support from a16z, Khosla Ventures, Hummingbird VC, Anthology (Anthropic and Menlo Ventures), as well as individuals and institutions in the AI field such as Patrick Collison, Naval, Guillermo Rauch, Noam Brown, Thomas Wolf, and Logan Kilpatrick.

According to the announcement, Underdog's mission is to provide free, accessible, reliable, and private AI to billions of people. The team proposed Underdog's Law: that cutting-edge intelligence will reach users' devices within six months. The project will start with high-speed AI that can run on consumer-grade hardware, advancing capabilities, speed, power consumption, and data efficiency through collaborative design of models and reasoning engines.

The announcement also stated that Underdog's research covers agent commerce, confidential reasoning, and how AI can reshape the internet economy, believing that privacy and capability no longer need to be mutually exclusive.