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AI OSS tool repo goes archived over night after raising $7.3M Seed
- shevy-java 3mo agoGuys - skynet is winning the war. We oldschool humans are left behind here. Wasn't GitHub once a place for humans? Now we could rename it SkyHub.
- jadhvank 3mo agointeresting. Another OSS goes to this way
- Morty95 3mo ago[flagged]
- starsang 3mo agoWe use TensorZero as our LLM Gateway and prompt evaluation platform. I would think a model-neutral prompt evaluation platform is still largely needed. Therefore I think we should somehow continue its life as a community project (TensorOne would be a good name).
- zacharymoskow 3mo agoWe were previously happy tensorzero customers!! cheers to your next project. We started concentrate.ai to tackle a similar issue and launched last week out of stealth with $5.1M pre-seed
- hek2sch 3mo agoMost VCs avoided application layer believing it is too risky with few player would emerge as winner over application layers calling them GPT wrapper (now called Harness) and pouring money into infra layer. Would love to see your opinion about how this thesis would turn out going forward.
- _pdp_ 3mo agoNot my experience. I think most VCs thesis is around the application layer - not much around the infrastructure. That being said, while I am biased, there is a lot of work around infrastructure so calling it "just a wrapper" massively underestimates the effort - this is purely from my own experience building this space. Besides, if it is true how come OpenClaw is spending so much money on a open source project. Salaries alone will cost 7 digit sum for a harness and I have first hand experience dealing with companies doing exactly this. Shameful plug - we are building cbk.ai, better known today as chatbotkit.com.
- onel 3mo agoYour post title is misleading and false. They didn't archive overnight, they raised the money last year, the founder explains in comments.
- MonstraG 3mo agoFor people like myself, who didn't understand the timing of events - raised in august 2025, archived yesterday without any notice.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- LeonM 3mo agoThe title makes it sound like they just did a seed round, but the seed round was announced in August of last year [0]. Their website landing page is now also showing the software is no longer maintained. No mention of why they made this decision, my best guess is they burned through their seed money and were unable to attract further investments. [0]: https://www.tensorzero.com/blog/tensorzero-raises-7-3m-seed-round-to-build-an-open-source-stack-for-industrial-grade-llm-applications/ https://www.tensorzero.com/blog/tensorzero-raises-7-3m-seed-...
- hoppp 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- realsarm 3mo agoYou can call it a bait but where is VCs due diligence for this. Most VCs where out there defending their infra layers investment. Just look at YC batches and see the inflated number of infra startups.
- Noaidi 3mo agoA great way to launder money then?
- jazzyjackson 3mo agoWhich step of “VC firm with millions to invest” and “fresh grads blow millions on AWS bills, sushi delivery and ketamine” is dirty money being washed?
- ajross 3mo ago"Failure" is the expected median though. You can't due-diligence your way out of "startup ran out of runway"! The discussion here isn't about funding, it's that there's a presumptively useful community tool which got abandoned because its owners took their toys and went home when the money ran out (instead of making a sincere effort at transitioning to community governance). That's on the IP owners being selfish jerks and/or grifting losers. It's not the VC's fault.
- bz_bz_bz 3mo agoSeed was in Aug ‘25 and website simply says the project will no longer be maintained: https://www.tensorzero.com/ https://www.tensorzero.com/
- DonHopkins 3mo agoObviously they upgraded, bought a dash, and moved on to https://www.tensor-one.com/ https://www.tensor-one.com/
- _ache_ 3mo agoAnd new Github profile too. https://github.com/TensorOne https://github.com/TensorOne
- GabrielBianconi 3mo agoSeed was in '24 actually but we only announced in '25.
- BoredPositron 3mo agoHoly burn rate.
- panny 3mo agoLOL, there's a sucker born every minute!
- dilawar 3mo agohttps://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4483&mobile=1 https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4483&mobile=1 couldn't resist. PS: Someone won't become a trillionaire with this attitude.
- panny 3mo agoThat was funny, I'm not even mad. Upvote for you.
- jdw64 3mo ago"I was assigned sucker at birth"
- oliculipolicula 3mo agoMost suckers are made, but some have inborn talent, yeah
- rvz 3mo agoBut it is written in Rust™.
- jdw64 3mo agoVCs think, 'Apps are risky, infrastructure is safe,' so they invested in AI infra. "infra is safe" Hmm, but that wasn't a good idea. because if an open source infrastructure project like TensorZero gets shut down this quickly, won't they start to realize that those investment theories are also risky? The difficult thing about AI infrastructure is that, unlike other industries, it will not become fragmented. It will likely remain tied to specific big tech models. What does this mean? It means that because AI models are not yet standardized, the infrastructure itself is actually riskier. In other words, the privatization of standards is happening. The challenge with AI infrastructure is that an independent, stable standard layer has not formed, unlike in other software infrastructure markets such as databases, web servers, cloud, and containers. Over time, those ecosystems developed relatively standardized interfaces and operational layers. But the LLM ecosystem is still evolving rapidly. Models themselves change fast, APIs differ, pricing differs, context windows, tool calling, structured output, evaluation, fine tuning, caching, routing, everything keeps changing. So even if an infrastructure startup tries to build a common abstraction layer across multiple models, before that common layer can stabilize, big model or cloud providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS, or Azure can just absorb the same functionality directly. In the end, AI infrastructure is at high risk of becoming an attached feature of model providers rather than solidifying as an independent layer. But if a startup that raised 7.3 million dollars fails this quickly, who would trust and invest in such things? That aside, it seems AI startups are all the rage these days. I also want to learn AI and get funded like that. Does anyone here trust me enough to invest? About one hundredth of that would probably be enough
- pqtyw 3mo agoInfra is perhaps somewhat safe but realistically it's a really low margin capital intense business long-term unless you can lock-in customers with hundreds of services like AWS. So not a lot of space for a huge ROI. > are all the rage these days Are they? Overall it seems kind of tame compared to 2020-21 since VCs are somewhat risk average outside of a few outliers. Funding looks much more concentrated these days.
- jdw64 3mo agoYou're right. Looking at recent indicators, there are more stable investments than I thought. But please understand that, as a human, I haven't achieved ROI in terms of marriage, relationships, a stable job, etc., so my perspective might be mixed with a bit of envy
- pavlov 3mo agoThis is the claim in the repo readme that presumably unlocked the VC investment: “TensorZero is used by companies ranging from frontier AI startups to the Fortune 10 and fuels ~1% of global LLM API spend today.” One percent seems like a lot. Anyone on HN use this?
- sebmellen 3mo agoGenerally speaking, every YC company post ~2020 is forced to make pathologically false claims to compete in the (fundraising) market.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- croes 3mo agoRounded to the nearest percent >0
- lostmsu 3mo agoceil(market_share)
- spmurrayzzz 3mo agoI used it, but only briefly to evaluate it. It had some overlap with a tool I built myself, was curious if any of the extra features would be useful. Ultimately I found the data model and UI to be both cumbersome and unintuitive. Langfuse ended up being the observability tool I went with instead over the one I built (and still use today).
- ojosilva 3mo agoJust tell AI to write your copy and that's what you get, overhype-as-a-service.
- GabrielBianconi 3mo agoWe raised most of the capital before we had any traction. We raised on a rolling basis and had millions in the bank before we had even published the open-source repository. Ultimately we raised based on the team's background + vision. The ~1% figure might be outdated today but it was a best-effort estimate a couple of months ago. TensorZero powered tens of trillions of inference tokens per month. TensorZero is not widely used but it was used by a couple of extreme-scale users.
- feverzsj 3mo agoAt least it's not a pig butchering scam.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hmokiguess 3mo agoThere was a high severity advisory last week https://github.com/tensorzero/tensorzero/security/advisories/GHSA-824w-x939-6cmc https://github.com/tensorzero/tensorzero/security/advisories... though these days can't even tell if this is related or just routine
- GabrielBianconi 3mo agoThis was coincidental. Someone reported the issue last week, we fixed it, and published the advisory.
- variety8675 3mo agoOpen source powers the business of many large corporations and they give essentially nothing back - why would maintainers refuse an offer for money in this environment?
- villgax 3mo agoJust switch to Bifrost already
- kmac_ 3mo agoAbout one year ago, I created an LLM gateway with metrics, provider fallback and switching, tools support, injecting, etc. etc., and unique features like acting as an MCP tools client and server, all streamed, with low latency. It was a simple project in terms of technical complexity. I didn't publish it as I counted several similar projects in the field. Putting $7.3M into such a project would make sense only in the case of a precise growth plan with already declared customers and an promising sales funnel. There is no technical moat.
- zackify 3mo agoThat's literally every project around AI. All the agent sandboxes. Hosting cron jobs that just hit ai rest endpoints for model completions etc
- jnovek 3mo agoThe calculus in “buy or build” has shifted for me over the last six months especially. If I can make an agent build it, I get the version that’s tailored for me. > It was a simple project in terms of technical complexity. That’s the thing, though. The version I build for myself sheds all the features that get in my way. I don’t share them either because they’re only useful for me. Perhaps in the future big tech projects will be delivered with a common “core” and the expectation that agents fill in the use-specific stuff.
- rfgplk 3mo ago> The calculus in “buy or build” has shifted for me over the last six months especially. If I can make an agent build it, I get the version that’s tailored for me. I feel like this is really going to change the software industry moving forwards. Historically it was tedious and time consuming to actually develop tailored dev tools which is why so many organizations relied on third party solutions. When nowadays you can easily half bake something in a few hours and get it working, tailored _specifically_ to your needs.
- asdff 3mo ago>When nowadays you can easily half bake something in a few hours and get it working, tailored _specifically_ to your needs. The thing is this requires you are given liberty to actually do this yourself. Think of something like say LMS software. Every college in the country is using what either blackboard or canvas. Could they make some bespoke LMS that works great for physics 101 at State university? Absolutely. But they don't, because the course director for physics 101 does not care or have the time to muck around with LMS prototypes. They barely have time to learn how to use their paid for LMS for anything but hosting the slides and syllabus. So on the one hand, yes, there is massive creative potential for people to roll their own tools. But this is not often met with the required time and liberty to then go on to roll their own tools. Buying off the shelf still serves the organizational need it ever did: defer the creating to "someone else" who has been anointed by marketshare as the thing to do already, so that if shit really hits the fan you can just say you did what anyone would have done in your position. Same function as management consultancy: insulating fallout from bad ideas from the people who could be fired for it and give them essentially an out where they won't get browbeaten over it. I think our culture around work and responsibility and "free time" needs a revolution for the LLMs to take off as promised as this playdoh tool.
- indigodaddy 3mo agoJust use Plexus [1]. The maintainer is not trying to be a hero or raise seed dollars or even really trying to promote it. He's just making an excellent, useful product. (Unaffiliated, just a happy user). It's not a full-on "LLMOps" platform (whatever that is), it's just a proxy that works very well and has some nice features. [1] https://github.com/mcowger/plexus https://github.com/mcowger/plexus
- SeriousM 3mo agoThanks! That's exactly what we need for our 6 ppl team.
- SamDc73 3mo agoI'm glad I used litellm in my last project https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/ https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/
- GabrielBianconi 3mo agoI'm the co-founder and CEO of TensorZero. We started the company two and a half years ago, and raised $7.3m in 2024 (announced only almost a year later). We've spent less than half of this amount. Earlier this week we came to the difficult decision to wind down the project. The open-source repository remains available on GitHub (Apache 2.0) but won't be actively maintained by the team moving forward.
- faeyanpiraat 3mo agoAre there any lessons around the why which may be publicly shared ?
- GabrielBianconi 3mo agoThere are many factors at play here but if I had to pick one... an open-source company has to find product market fit twice: first for the OSS project and again for a commercial product. The AI market moves very quickly so it's easy to take a step in the wrong direction and fall behind. I might publish a long-form reflection when the dust settles.
- cbsmith 3mo agoAre there other OSS LLMOps projects that have overtaken you? I couldn't think of one.
- gavinray 3mo agoIt might come off as trite, but I genuinely am sorry that things didn't pan out for you Very early in my career I used to believe that I or anyone else could be a CEO. It wasn't until working with tiny teams where the CEO/founders devoted everything in their life to the business -- often at the expense of hobbies, romantic relationships, and any shred of free time -- that I realized true CEOs are a rare breed. When are you ask things like "what happens if the product fails?" the answer would always be "It won't." They both relentlessly believe in, and put every ounce of energy toward, their vision because anything less would not suffice Again as trite as it sounds, I empathize with these people in that to them losing their vision felt like losing something dearest to them
- AilessLab 3mo ago[flagged]
- joka88xj 3mo ago[flagged]
- krembo 3mo agoI don’t understand the commenters here who are attacking the entrepreneur. If it's not your money, then he is accountable only to his investors.
- RIMR 3mo agoYou don't have to have money on something to have an opinion about it.
- arjie 3mo agoClick through to their profiles and you'll find that they habitually do this. Preserve your own sanity and just eject them from your feed by removing comment subtrees starting with their comments. I see less than half of the comments in this thread and they're in the realm of reasonable. Treat it as an engineering problem where you're trying to lower the noise floor.
- ofcyes 3mo ago[dead]
- xyst 3mo agoAmong the first domino to fall leading up the AI bust. Hope my 401K won’t get decimated by this one.
- andruby 3mo agoWhat are good OSS alternatives? Or do most users not bother with such infra tool?
- agentifysh 3mo agoI've forked this and will be updating and fixing issues going forward. https://github.com/agentify-sh/gateway https://github.com/agentify-sh/gateway For now I will just open this up to see if there is any interest if so I would be spending whatever free time I get to fix issues and open it up to other contributors so we can keep going. I think its important to have an LLM gateway tool like this to remain open source.
- xducn1 3mo ago[flagged]
- Dollarland 3mo ago[flagged]