Interview #21 – Aiden (Rabbit R1)
A core Rabbit R1 engineer discusses the device's origins, custom OS, and voice-first design philosophy in an interview, covering technical challenges and hardware constraints.
Background
This is an interview with Aiden, an early employee at Rabbit Inc., the company behind the R1 device — a pocket-sized, AI-powered gadget that was heavily hyped in early 2024 as a "phone killer" but widely panned at launch for being unfinished, buggy, and lacking core features. Rabbit raised tens of millions from investors including Khosla Ventures. The R1 uses a "Large Action Model" (LAM) to interact with apps on the user's behalf, though reviewers found it barely worked. Jesse Lyu (the CEO, previously known for a failed startup called Raven Tech) has been a controversial figure. This interview likely discusses Rabbit's internal culture, the R1's development chaos, and what went wrong.