50,000 units were sold in two weeks, and founder Lu Cheng responded to what exactly is Rabbit R1?
Author|Xinxin
Edited by Jing Yu
2023 is the year of the rise of AI software.
And 2024 may be the year when AI hardware is gradually emerging.
At CES 2024 in Las Vegas, a consumer-grade AI device called rabbit r1 stole a lot of the limelight when it debuted, and the first 10,000 units sold out quickly. The next few batches were also sold out in just a few days.
After the device detonated at CES, it was hailed as a major breakthrough in the field of AI, creating a "post-smartphone experience". At the same time, the tech community and the media have mixed reviews of the rabbit r1, ranging from positive comments from the perspective of AI hardware, to concerns about design flaws and doubts about the meaning of existence.
What exactly is it for? Is it the product of yet another AI hype? or is it the next iPhone in the age of AI?
Recently, Lu Cheng, founder of Rabbit Inc, the company behind Rabbit r1, came forward to respond to the thinking behind r1, the "AI hit" hardware, and how AI entrepreneurs should compete with giants in the current boom.
r1
"Explosive sale" of 50,000 units
"The fifth batch of 10,000 Rabbit R1 devices has been sold out. Rabbit made the announcement last week.
Since its debut, the Rabbit R1 has attracted a lot of attention from the tech community, with 50,000 units sold so far, and the sixth batch of pre-orders has begun, with deliveries waiting until at least June. Someone has even increased the price by a few hundred dollars to put the Rabbit R1 up for auction on eBay.
The fifth batch of Rabbit R1 announced to be sold out | Rabbit
For many buyers, in terms of appearance, the first and most attractive thing about this square machine is the retro orange shell, like a handheld game console in the last century.
The device's touchscreen is 2.88 inches, with a scroll wheel for browsing information for the AI to perform tasks, a push-to-talk button, and a rotating camera with a privacy door that performs computer vision tasks, such as identifying items.
Inside, the device comes with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 2.3GHz MediaTek processor, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity options, a USB-C port, and an empty SIM card slot, and the device costs $199.
Rabbit R1 Specs & Construction | Rabbit
But unlike smartphones, rabbit r1 doesn't have a standalone app, but connects to phone apps through its own operating system, Rabbit OS.
To put it simply, Rabbit R1 is like an AI agent that operates your smartphone for you.
According to the company, Rabbit OS is the first operating system built on the Large Action Model. At the AI functional level, LAM differs from LLM in that it can process natural language and translate it into executable tasks. LAM interacts with popular applications such as Apple Music, Uber, eBay, and Amazon, and supports voice commands to perform complex tasks on behalf of the user, such as making travel itineraries, booking tickets, shopping, sending messages, controlling music, answering queries, and more.
This foundational model is purported to infer and model human actions on computer interfaces by learning the user's intentions and behaviors when using a particular application, and then mimic and execute them. In the near future, users will be able to teach their "rabbits" to perform specific tasks, such as using image editing software to remove watermarks from photos.
"These features enable users to trigger actions much faster than on the most powerful flagship smartphones. Rabbit's official statement said.
In addition, privacy protection is a selling point of the Rabbit R1, which says that the device does not have an "always listen" mode, the far-field microphone only records when the Push-To-Talk button is pressed, and the rotating camera is designed to ensure privacy, and the user can erase stored data at any time.
The R1's camera can be advertised and protect privacy
However, while the Rabbit R1 has taken it by storm, some have questioned the design of the device. For example, "What if you're left-handed. Or, "There's a lot of wasted space on the right side, so even if you're right-handed, you can't touch the entire screen with your thumb." 」
In addition to being unfriendly to left-handers, there are also netizens who are dissatisfied with the thickness of the device, thinking that the speaker is a bit harsh, or complaining that the SIM card slot only supports 4G LTE speeds, etc.
In addition, there is the practical question of why Rabbit does not directly develop a mobile app, but bothers to build a hardware device. A Silicon Valley software engineer bluntly said, "I can use a mobile app, just one device, why two, why is it so complicated to do something that is so simple." "And does the LAM have LLM defects? What if the Large Action goes wrong? Do you have to take the time to confirm that the device is actually performing the task?"
Still, in terms of experience, some players believe that these so-called problems can be "forgiven", saying that the R1 is a breakthrough product that offers a new way to interact with technology, and even creates a "post-smartphone experience".
There are also buyers who simply think, "It looks cool" and "It's cute".
Worse still, they think, "That's it." That's the iPhone moment in the age of AI. rabbit r1。 」
Some netizens called rabbit r1 an iPhone moment in the era of AI | X
r1 不是「AI iPhone」
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, the company that created the orange machine is rabbit and was founded by a group of Kaggle gurus, former Google engineers, and multiple entrepreneurs.
At the Rabbit R1 launch event, Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu stands in front of a black background, wearing a black T-shirt and holding a bright orange device. Until then, he was best known as the founder of Raven Technology.
Cheng graduated from the University of Liverpool with a bachelor's degree in Financial Mathematics and Marketing, and was a two-year graduate of Y Combinator. He founded Raven Tech in 2013 to develop a conversational AI operating system, which was later acquired by Baidu for smart speakers, where he worked for more than a year.
In recent years, Mr. Lu has become close to Jesper Kouthoofd, the founder of Swedish consumer electronics company and manufacturer Teenage Engineering, where he serves on the board of directors of the rabbit r1 body, which was also designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering.
To date, rabbit has raised about $30 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures, Synergis Capital, and KAKAO Investment.
Rabbit CEO Cheng Lv demonstrates Rabbit R1 | Rabbit
"Today is the beginning of a new era of human-computer interaction," said Cheng Lu, founder and CEO of Rabbit, "We have reached a point where we have hundreds of apps on our smartphones with complex user experience designs that make it impossible to communicate with each other. The result is that users get frustrated with their devices and often get lost. 」
Rabbit is now working to build "an intuitive app-free experience" with AI, with large Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) demonstrating the possibility of understanding natural language through AI, and their Large Action Model "going one step further and being more than just a response to human input generating text – it generates and performs actions on behalf of the user to help complete the task," Lu said. 」
He emphasised that the Rabbit R1 is not now intended to replace mobile phones, but rather something "completely different from mobile phones".
Lu Cheng believes that the mobile phone market is dominated by two powerful operating systems that are deeply rooted in consumer expectations in terms of form and user experience, and for a smaller startup, trying to challenge this situation will lead to never-ending competition.
So why still make hardware, not applications?
Lu acknowledges that Rabbit could theoretically be a software product, but his concern is that "apps are relatively easy to build, but they are also easy to replicate, which is very difficult to maintain and build customer loyalty." 」
He also argues that in addition to the hassle of creating and maintaining apps for iOS and Android, on both platforms, "it's not that they're malicious, but they have the power to destroy you at any time." At the same time, companies like Apple might see his code, "Remember one of the most popular apps in the early days of the App Store was called Flashlight, now look what's going on? Apple just included that feature in iOS." 」
"So is building an app sustainable for startups? Maybe not. While hardware is expensive and challenging, he believes that hardware can provide more moats for the company's business, "The best way to be a startup is to reduce risk on hardware. 」
This is not to say that the hardware is perfect, "We are not saying that you should abandon your phone, nor do we have the delusion that carrying two devices is better than one", but at this stage, Lu Cheng feels that the first thing they need to solve is the software experience, and the ergonomic problem of the product is put on the back burner.
The current product is more of a balance, in his words, "with a big vision" but with "modest and cautious and bold steps". The former is about the opportunity to revolutionize the HMI, and the latter is about wanting to take users back to the good old days of the 90s with the "new gadget" Rabbit.
The design of the Rabbit R1 is inspired by radio operator's equipment, which includes giant walkie-talkie buttons for fun and reliability.
The buttons on the r1 mimic the Push to talk design of a walkie-talkie|rabbit
Lu Cheng said that the button design was a brain-free decision because it felt familiar, could get real-world analog feedback, and satisfied the desire for reliable control, and the same design ideas that permeate Rabbit's scroll wheel and camera.
As for what exactly AI hardware means, Lu Cheng believes that the iPhone of AI is still far away. In his opinion, hardware entrepreneurship is difficult, the field of AI hardware is completely new, no one can do anything in the first attempt, and in order to reduce the risk, he chose to be more conservative in the design of Rabbit.
For the attempt of the rabbit R1, there are still industry celebrities who approve of it. During the 2024 Davos Forum, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the demo of Rabbit OS and r1 was probably one of the most impressive he had seen since Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007.
The AI hardware war begins
Now, engineers in Silicon Valley are scrambling to work on the next big thing in artificial intelligence.
In the context of the rapid development of AI, Lu Cheng felt that they had to launch products now and seize the strategic opportunity.
More and more AI-powered hardware is already on the market, and some products are just connecting with chatbots. In order to highlight the cheapness of his rabbit r1, Lu Cheng also displayed Humane's AI Pin and other hardware devices on the screen of the press conference as a comparison.
Humane is a hardware startup founded by former Apple executives, and their wearable AI Pin was unveiled publicly in November last year. But the bird that flies first does not guarantee and represent success, and before shipping any equipment, it was revealed that the company had laid off 4% of its staff in early January.
前苹果高管创业推出 AI Pin ｜ Humane
At the same time, tech giants have joined the testing ground. Google is integrating generative AI into its hardware offerings, and the Pixel 8 series already includes some photo editing features that leverage generative AI, such as "Magic Editor" and "Best Face". The recent Pixel 8 Pro update also enabled generative AI summaries and WhatsApp's auto-reply suggestions.
Google may have more plans and moves around AI hardware in the future, including the launch of a new AI assistant on the Pixel 9, as well as AI glasses with object recognition, among others.
Amazon's smart speaker products will also usher in the addition of generative AI, and last year it teased a new version of Alexa built on a new large language model to make it perform closer to humans.
Apple's actions are also in the spotlight, but Apple isn't high-profile when it comes to generative AI. CEO Tim Cook doesn't allegedly feel the need to add "AI" to the iPhone's feature names, but Apple is rumored to have important plans for generative AI, including the introduction of large language models in Siri and the construction of AI servers. In addition, in a research paper late last year, Apple researchers described a new way to run large language models on memory-limited computing devices.
On the OpenAI side, CEO Sam Altman, in addition to supporting Humane, has already had some discussions with former Apple design executives about consumer AI devices, and is said to have negotiated a $1 billion raising with SoftBank's Masayoshi Son.
As for how to face the competition of these giants, Lu Cheng has this response on X: "A common perception is, oh, Apple can do it, Google can do it, then you will only be crushed. Yes, they can do anything as giants, but that doesn't mean we should stop there, surrender, and not even try. In that case, the startup would not exist at all. 」
"If I start thinking that our idea is the best and that our startup will be successful, I'm delusional. I created rabbit only because I didn't have the patience to wait for these giants to do it. Lu Cheng said.
He made the analogy: "Would you rather be the wave itself, the best surfer in town, or a floating corpse? 」
"Success is not in ideas, but in execution and speed. Lu said.
Header image source: rabbit