As legend has it, back in the long, long ago (1995) when a website got popular, demand outpaced what the hardware could provide. Networks congested and slowed the experience for everyone and often crashed completely. A group from MIT took on the challenge and attacked the problem with mathematics. They called their company Akamai.
Starting with a single pixel on a Disney website in 1999, Akamai stabilized massive traffic loads to deliver seamless experiences to internet users. And they’re not the only ones who quietly revolutionized their respective technologies.
Cisco started by connecting incompatible networks at Stanford and turned a campus networking problem into a business that helped connect the world. VMware figured out how to run multiple operating systems on a single ordinary computer then parlayed the breakthrough to help businesses get far more from their existing infrastructure. Qualcomm helped trucking companies track their fleet by satellite before its wireless research reshaped cellular communication.
When we start by solving a narrowly defined engineering problem, the consequences can be bigger than we ever imagined.
The same opportunity exists in AI. Layers in the infrastructure are still being invented. And these are the problems we’re here to solve. The problems that can’t be vibe-coded. The math that hasn’t been worked out yet. To remove the constraints that make intelligence expensive, slow or inaccessible.
Right now, the price of intelligence decides who gets to use it.
Backboard will work to solve these hard problems to make intelligence abundant enough for people to pursue their most delusional ideas.
We will relentlessly pursue bringing more useful intelligence to existing hardware at lower costs without sacrificing quality.
The intelligence revolution will not be televised …or streamed. It will be built on hardcore engineering.
This is our obsession.