Starmind
I am building a tiny and intelligent language model. Even a 5-year-old can run an AI model on his/her $15 Raspberry Pi.
Why?
As builders, I believe we have a responsibility to empower the next generation with the tools they need to tinker and create. When I was growing up around the year 2000, my toolkit included things like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, motors, and Python code — affordable, accessible resources that made experimentation possible.
Today, AI is becoming an essential part of that toolkit. But most kids can't pay for expensive APIs or buy powerful GPUs to run the latest models. Right now the options are limited:
- Use Gemini/GPT/Claude — they don't have a credit card
- Use a Large Open-source Model — they don't have GPUs
- Use existing Small Language Models — low quality
If we want future innovators to thrive, we need to make these tools accessible to them — because one day, those kids will be the ones humanity depends on.
What are we doing?
I hope to achieve this with many experiments:
- Model pre-training
- Fine-tuning
- Merging
- Pruning
- And much more
All codes, datasets, model weights, budgets are shared openly. You can replicate and improve these experiments freely.
Where does the money come from?
Training language models is expensive. OpenAI, Anthropic & Google spend billions. Deepseek spends millions. The cheapest experiments cost tens of thousands.
I have been fortunate enough to receive GPU compute credits from Inflection Grant, Prime Intellect, and CloudRift. Combined with startup credits from AWS & Azure, and my ability to efficiently use compute, I have been able to fund these experiments.
Is it even possible?
So far, most intelligent models are large. A handful of small models have proven "kinda dumb." And all cost a lot of money and human resources.
There's no guarantee of success. I'm not doing this because it's easy. I do it because I believe it's important.
Progress
So far, I have performed a few experiments and launched one model that generates 3D objects — CADMonkey.
Check it out at starmind.comfyspace.tech
If you want to donate and/or collaborate, contact me at thomas@comfyspace.tech