Today, we're sharing that River AI has raised $1.1 billion, led by @generalcatalyst and @amppublic with strategic investment from @nvidia and @AMD. Additional investors include @ycombinator and @Temasek. We imagine a future where your AI works entirely for you and deeply aligns with your values. Compared to the corporate chatbots of today, it will feel completely different: responsible, curious, and truly yours. Most importantly, you'll own everything: the hardware it runs on, the data it learns from, and the intelligence itself. Our training API is already live and powering incredible work today. This new funding accelerates our push to bring the full personal AI stack to life. Read River AI CEO Igor Babuschkin’s (@ibab) conversation with the New York Times to learn more: nytimes.com/2026/08/11/techn…

River AI is growing and we've published new roles in research, engineering, and operations. Check out our careers site or reach out to our team today. If you want to build the future of personal AI, join us! river.ai/careers

We're thrilled to announce that @Cisco_Invests is joining River AI's $1.1B round as a strategic investor. Personal, user-owned AI needs the best of product and infrastructure behind it. @jpatel41 understands both deeply and we're excited to work with him and the @Cisco team.

We put together a $1.1B round for @river_ai_inc to build American leadership in open weights. Frontier labs push the boundary of humanity, but open weights empower humanity, putting intelligence into everyone's hands. @ibab has built frontier capability three times over. Now he's making it something you can own.

How do we create amazing personal AI? Here's a recent talk from River CEO Igor Babuschkin (@ibab) sharing our vision for personal AI and continual learning.

"As a proprietary model builder, you're kind of starting to get squeezed in.” That's @ibab’s take on where the biggest AI labs stand today. He explains how you need the models to get way better to keep margin, but at some level they may be too sensitive to release. This week, I sat down with Igor on Unsupervised Learning. It was a fascinating conversation with someone who has real perspective on the questions everyone in AI is asking right now. From DeepMind's StarCraft project to early reasoning work at OpenAI to co-founding xAI, Igor has had a front-row seat to nearly every major AI breakthrough. He's now the co-founder of River AI, building individualized, locally-run AI models. We discuss: ▪️Why proprietary model labs might be in trouble ▪️What it's like working with Elon ▪️Building Colossus in 120 days ▪️Should enterprises train their own models ▪️What’s left for humans as models get better ▪️Why he left xAI to bet on personal local AI instead ▪️The three bets River is taking ▪️What's stopping AI from moving beyond coding ▪️Reflections on the rapid pace of the past years 0:00 Intro 1:17 Writing Fiction on Where AI Is Headed 4:46 Cracking Agents Beyond Coding 10:29 Why Igor Left to Start River 12:22 River's Three Big Bets 18:06 Weights vs. Memory: The Personalization Debate 22:04 Should Enterprises Train Their Own Models? 25:10 Are Proprietary Labs Losing Their Edge? 32:16 The China Open-Source Problem 44:19 The Elon Call That Started xAI 50:18 Thoughts on Cursor Acquisition 52:16 What's Actually Bottlenecking AI 56:55 Humans, Machines, and Staying Relevant 1:01:29 Igor's Odds This All Goes Well YouTube: piped.video/0aBTpoCX_A8 Spotify: bit.ly/4h3UJWt Apple: bit.ly/4w0BCAs

We've received plenty of applications for the API waitlist and have opened up access to a number of enterprises and researchers already. We're improving the API based on your feedback, and we expect to open up to the public in the next few weeks.

River AI is building personal AI owned & shaped by you. We are hiring exceptional talent across the stack: * Research * Software Engineering * Product Development * Data * Hardware, RTL Design Engineer * Hardware, Design Verification Engineer * Hardware, Physical Design Engineer * Hardware, Performance Engineer * Hardware, Compiler Engineer * Open Application, Exceptional Talent river.ai/careers We are a small, elite team of researchers, builders, and pioneers from the world's leading AI labs. If you want to do the most ambitious work of your career alongside, apply today!