Weaviate's 7-year origin story: a year without pay, betting on NLP before the RAG hype
CShorten30 · x · 2026-09-14
Weaviate co-founders Bob van Luijt and Etienne Dilocker retell the company's seven-year journey on Weaviate Podcast #140: a chance meeting with a Node.js prototype, betting on NLP when "AI" was too fringe a word, adopting HNSW as a niche paper, going a year without salaries, raising a $1.2M seed during COVID, and having the product ready when ChatGPT and RAG hype arrived.
More from Companies & People
- Some firms pull back on Anthropic models over data retention concerns, The Information reports — sarahbmyers · 2026-09-14
- MrBeast hires Director of Insights to sell creator-led marketing data story to brands — round · 2026-09-14
- The Robotics Prisoner's Dilemma: Use Frontier Models and Your Moat Gets Absorbed — ChongZzZhang · 2026-09-14
- NBER Economics of AI 2026 heads to Toronto with focus on AI in China — joshgans · 2026-09-14
- a16z's Josh Elman: AI collapsed build costs, not the cost of knowing what to build — a16z · 2026-09-14
- AI's 'rationalist' scene is really a Berkeley culture, argues OpenAI-adjacent researcher — jachiam0 · 2026-09-14