Ask HN: AI Model Marketplace?

6 pointsalexdong2y ago2 comments

We trained a new CLIP model that outperforms the original CLIP from OpenAI(openai/clip-vit-large-patch14 on huggingface).

Well, outperform is probably an understatement. It's more like GPT-4 vs. GPT-2 level of difference. It's really quite marvellous to see how accurate/helpful/habit-changing it can be applying the model to do image search, find similar photos, finding people/pet, deduplications, adding captions, etc, etc.

Now we are a small seed-stage B2C company working on an iOS app. So B2B sales just isn't what we set out to do. We've spent a good portion of our runway on the training, so it'll be nice if we can get some revenue back from selling/licensing the model.

Do you have a recommendation for a marketplace we should look at? Ideally we just upload our model and define the interface, the platform will provide traffic/eyeballs, trial rate-limit, usage metering, billing.

BTW, HN Search on "AI Model Marketplace" turns up a graveyard of empty promises, busted startups and disappointed investors, which I take as a sigh that maybe there just ain't a market out there, which is equally good to know.

Thanks!

2 comments

alexmolas2y ago

So you have spent all your money training a model and now you don't know what to do with it?

alexdongOP2y ago

Don't be silly. :-).

We have 350k and the training costs more like 5k.

Like I said in the question. It's proven to be hugely helpful to our app.

Our internal discussion is whether we should keep it as a secret weapon/asset or maybe we can monetise it to extend our runway.

PS. Alex, you are a husband/father just like I am. A snarky comment just isn't very helpful. Are you making the internet better place?

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