Back to Highlights
HF0 Residency Demo Day

The Next Unicorns: 7 Top AI Startups

Real revenue. Validated models. From 25M users to $100M revenue days. Meet the 7 AI startups from HF0 Residency building the next generation of unicorns.

Portfolio Stats

Combined impact across all 7 startups

250M+

Total Users

$100M+

Combined ARR

10-100%

Monthly Growth

5 verticals

Categories

Investment Themes

Where the value is being created

Infrastructure Winners

OpenRouter (LLM routing), Koframe (AI growth teams), Upside (revenue attribution)

OpenRouter
Koframe
Upside

Voice AI Renaissance

OpenHome (smart speakers), OpenAudio (expressive voice models)

OpenHome
OpenAudio

Real-World Applications

Glow (climate/solar), Favored (social app), Krea (creative suite)

Glow
Favored
Krea

Notable Quotes

Real quotes from the founders

"The internet is dead. It's not adaptive. It's not personal."

Josh, Koframe

Timestamp: 06:35

"Scale is dead... Reliability is revenue."

Eugene, Federous AI

Timestamp: 08:06

"Inference is a commodity."

Alex Atala, OpenRouter

Timestamp: 20:56

"Would you use DoorDash if it only worked 45% of the time?"

Eugene, Federous AI

Timestamp: 08:47

"AI agents succeed 45% of the time. Would you order DoorDash that way? Of course not."

Eugene, Federous AI

Timestamp: 08:45

The 7 Startups

Real companies, real revenue, real traction

1

Krea

AI Creative Suite

AI Creative Suite

Diego RodriguezCo-founder & CTO

Generative AI platform producing 1M images/day for studios like Fox and Netflix. Building tools to find the "traffic" - what happens when you generate a million images per day?

Users

25M

Daily Generation

1M images

Team Size

8 people

Customer Example

Fox, Netflix

Key Highlights:

  • 25M users with only 8 people
  • Fox broadcast ad in 2 days from signup
  • 1M images generated daily
  • Raised $25M+ funding
"The internet is dead. It's not adaptive. It's not personal."

Diego Rodriguez

Timestamp: 02:18 • Creative AI

2

OpenHome

AI-Driven Smart Speakers

AI-Driven Smart Speakers

SuaFounder

Open-source, LLM-driven, fully jailbroken AI smart speakers with developer ecosystem. 10,000+ developers building voice applications. 500 free dev kits announced at conference.

Developers

10,000+

Dev Kits Announced

500 free

Applications

Hundreds

Market Position

3rd bestseller

Key Highlights:

  • 500 free dev kits for conference attendees
  • 10,000+ developers building
  • Open source, LLM-driven, jailbroken
  • Smart speakers = 3rd bestselling consumer product
"The smartphone was the number one bestselling consumer product last year and the laptop was the second. Pop quiz: What was the third? A smart speaker. 500 million smart speakers were sold last year. But why do they still suck?"

Sua

Timestamp: 03:01 • Voice AI

3

Koframe

Personalized AI Growth Teams

Personalized AI Growth Teams

JoshFounder

Giving every website visitor their own AI growth team. $20M generated for Europe's largest travel company in weeks. Only marketing tech company partnered directly with OpenAI.

Revenue Generated

$20M in weeks

Customer 1

Europe's largest travel company

Customer 2

India's largest enterprise ($400B)

Partnership

OpenAI direct partner

Key Highlights:

  • $20M for travel company in weeks
  • Increased CTR for $400B Indian enterprise
  • OpenAI's only direct marketing tech partner
  • Built autonomous coding agent #1 on GitHub
"The internet is dead. It's not adaptive. It's not personal. It's not truly living in a sense. Websites are all one-size-fits-all. And we're bringing that concept to life."

Josh

Timestamp: 06:33 • Marketing AI

4

Federous AI

Reliable AGI, Not Smarter AGI

Reliable AGI, Not Smarter AGI

EugeneFounder

Quorki 72B model without transformer attention. 1000x lower inference cost. "Scale is dead" - reliability matters more than intelligence. Action R1 agent beats Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI.

Model Size

72B parameters

Inference Cost

1000x lower

Training GPUs

Only 8 GPUs

Architecture

No transformer attention

Key Highlights:

  • Quorki 72B: World's largest without transformer attention
  • 1000x lower inference cost
  • Action R1 beats Claude, Gemini, OpenAI
  • Reliability is revenue
"Scale is dead and I'm not saying this just from my own opinion like we are burning billions into making AI models bigger but at the same time the DeepMind founder and CEO is saying compound AI agents errors will take more than 10 years to fix."

Eugene

Timestamp: 08:06 • Foundation Models

5

Upside

Forensic Revenue Attribution

Forensic Revenue Attribution

JonasCo-founder

Using LLMs and knowledge graphs to fix sales/marketing data mess. Forensic analysis of what actually drives revenue. 100M daily users from previous Branch experience.

Previous Exit

$5B (Branch)

Past Users

100M daily

Technology

LLM + Knowledge Graphs

Focus

Revenue attribution

Key Highlights:

  • Forensic revenue attribution with LLMs
  • Fixing sales/marketing data mess
  • Knowledge graph powered
  • 100M daily users from Branch experience
"Using LLMs and knowledge graphs for forensic revenue attribution - fixing the mess that is sales and marketing data."

Jonas

Timestamp: 09:20 • B2B SaaS

6

OpenAudio (Fish Audio)

Most Expressive Voice Model

Most Expressive Voice Model

SuaFounder

S1 instructible voice model with emotional control. $5.5M ARR in 4 months (400K to 5.5M). $100M valuation. Most expressive voice AI model.

ARR Growth

$400K → $5.5M (4 months)

Valuation

$100M

Model

S1 instructible voice

Differentiation

Emotional control

Key Highlights:

  • $5.5M ARR in 4 months
  • $100M valuation
  • S1: Most expressive voice model
  • Emotional control capabilities
"Personal story: Building AI companions after girlfriend cheated. Most expressive voice model with emotional control."

Sua

Timestamp: 14:26 • Voice AI

7

Glow

Solar Incentive Protocol

Solar Incentive Protocol

David VorickFounder (Siacoin creator)

Crypto-based solar incentive protocol. $30M raised. World record: $10M on-chain revenue in single day. Real-world application of crypto incentives.

Funding

$30M raised

World Record

$10M revenue in 1 day

Founder Track Record

Created Siacoin

Use Case

Solar incentives

Key Highlights:

  • World record: $10M on-chain revenue in one day
  • $30M funding raised
  • Solar incentives with crypto
  • Founded by Siacoin creator
"World record onchain revenue: $10M in single day with solar incentive protocol using crypto."

David Vorick

Timestamp: 16:44 • Crypto/Climate

8

Favored

World's Most Engaging App

World's Most Engaging App

DavidFounder

Social app with $100M annualized revenue. Fastest growing company. 250M users generating $20M/year. Engagement metrics that blow away competitors.

Annualized Revenue

$100M

Users

250M

User Revenue

$20M/year

Growth

Fastest growing

Key Highlights:

  • $100M annualized revenue
  • 250M users
  • World's most engaging app
  • Fastest growing company
"World's most engaging app scaled to $100M annualized revenue, fastest growing company."

David

Timestamp: 17:30 • Consumer Social

9

OpenRouter

First & Largest LLM Marketplace

First & Largest LLM Marketplace

Alex AtalaCo-founder

Single API for all LLM models. 10-100% monthly growth for two years straight. Inference is a commodity. Model routing marketplace connecting developers to every AI model.

Growth Rate

10-100% monthly (2 years)

Market Position

First & largest

Business Model

LLM marketplace/routing

Philosophy

Inference is commodity

Key Highlights:

  • 10-100% monthly growth for 2 years
  • First and largest LLM marketplace
  • Single API for all models
  • Inference is a commodity
"Inference is a commodity. We're growing 10-100% every single month for two years."

Alex Atala

Timestamp: 20:56 • AI Infrastructure

Key Takeaways

What we learned from HF0 Residency

Real Revenue Over Vanity Metrics

These startups have real revenue ($100M+ ARR combined) and real users (250M+). No fake it till you make it - they made it first.

Infrastructure Plays Winning

OpenRouter, Koframe, and Upside are all infrastructure picks helping other companies use AI effectively.

Voice AI Renaissance

OpenHome and OpenAudio prove voice AI is having a moment. Smart speakers are the 3rd bestselling consumer product for a reason.

Reliability Over Intelligence

Federous AI argues scale is dead and reliability matters more. Would you use DoorDash if it only worked 45% of the time?

Source: HF0 Residency Demo Day • Video ID: L8-5ezsoI5A • Duration: ~22 minutes

Full transcript analysis with verified timestamps and real quotes from founders.