Underdog, an invite-only AI assistant launched Monday by Conway Research, is positioning itself as a privacy-focused alternative to cloud-based assistants. Founder Sigil Wen, a Thiel Fellow who previously lived in a Silicon Valley AI hacker house, built the assistant to run entirely on users' own hardware, so personal data never leaves the device. The company says this removes the need for the data-collection practices common among competitors.
Underdog's business model is unusual for the AI sector. The app will be free and never ad-supported, with revenue coming from a small percentage of payment transactions the assistant makes through Stripe's payment rails. Wen argues that because the model runs locally, his costs are low enough to avoid subscriptions. The startup is backed by prominent investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and angel investors such as Patrick Collison and Noam Brown.
The assistant currently uses a 27-billion-parameter model fine-tuned from Qwen3.8-27B, which Wen claims compares favorably with top-tier models from six months ago. He acknowledges that on-device models are smaller than state-of-the-art data-center models but says they are capable enough for everyday tasks like shopping research and math homework. The source notes that this privacy-first approach contrasts with rivals whose policies may allow data collection for advertising or model training. No other sources were provided, so the article reflects only TechCrunch's reporting.{