Meet the inaugural Builders Accelerator cohort
We’re excited to unveil the first-ever Mozilla Builders Accelerator cohort. This group of projects exemplifies the current state of AI innovation while offering a glimpse into what’s possible tomorrow — they are a testament to the creativity, ingenuity, and power of the open-source AI ecosystem.
Our Focus: Local AI
We’re deeply committed to privacy, user empowerment, and open-source innovation at Mozilla. We chose Local AI as the central theme for our inaugural cohort because it aligns with those values. Local AI applications and tools put control firmly in the hands of users, not those of Big Tech.
Program Details
- Each selected project has received funding from Mozilla.
- Participants will engage in an intensive 12-week build-sprint program.
- The program will culminate in a demo day event in San Francisco.
This accelerator represents a significant step in nurturing AI innovations prioritizing user autonomy and privacy. We look forward to working with the solutions our cohort will develop.
Three key categories stood out during our review process: application and training/fine-tuning, developer tools and infrastructure enhancement, and expressive media and data visualization projects.
Application and training/fine-tuning
Projects that focus on improving and customizing AI models for better performance and real-world use.
- Koel Labs
A platform that provides instant pronunciation feedback and language coaching, Koel Labs uses movie scenes to improve pronunciation in real time.
Builders: Alexander Metzger & Ruslan Mukhamedvaleev
- Sartify
Designed to provide general and domain-specific AI capabilities for Swahili-speaking regions, Sartify’s Swahili-LLM supports multilingual interactions, including the Kiswa-English mix common in East Africa.
Builder: Michael Mollel
- ScholasticAI
Helping users access high-quality scientific data in multiple languages, ScholasticAI uses open-source AI models to process open licensed scientific documents. This approach ensures accessibility of top-tier research while remaining private and reducing the need for remote servers.
Builders: Anastasia Stasenko & Pierre-Carl Langlais
- Transformer Lab
Transformer Lab is a comprehensive application for building, training, and managing local LLMs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It simplifies working with LLMs, allowing users to train, fine-tune, evaluate, and export them across formats.
Builders: Ali Asaria & Tony Salomone
Developer tools and infrastructure enhancement
Tools and systems that make software development easier and more powerful, helping developers build and manage their projects more effectively.
- Ersilia Model Hub
A curated set of AI/ML models for drug discovery research in low- and middle-income countries. The models on Ersilia Model Hub can operate locally, ensuring access even in areas with poor internet connectivity and helping improve researcher access for drug discovery in the Global South.
Builders: Dhanshree Arora, Gemma Turon & Miquel Duran-Frigola
- Foyle
An AI copilot that learns from continuous feedback, Foyle uses a notebook format to simplify automation and operations tasks across workflows.
Builder: Jeremy Lewi
- FREUD
Feature Retrieval, Editing, and Understanding for Developers (FREUD) helps developers better control and understand AI model outputs by focusing on the interpretability of speech-to-text models like Whisper.
Builder: Konstantine Sadov
- Marker
Using advanced OCR for layout, text, and math detection, Marker converts PDFs to Markdown while running locally. This ensures high-quality data extraction without needing constant internet access. Paired with companion tools Surya and Texify, Marker helps create robust training datasets and improves data processing efficiency.
Builder: Vikas Paruchuri
- The NX Project
The NX project leverages Elixir’s unique strengths in multitasking and fault tolerance to create a scalable, distributed ML framework that outperforms current solutions.
Builders: Paulo Valente & Brian Cardarella
- Open WebUI
Open WebUI is a popular platform with over 3 million downloads. It offers an easy-to-use interface that lets users run powerful GPT-like AI models without an internet connection. The team is currently focused on building a community where users can share data and insights to improve AI models together.
Builder: Timothy J. Baek
- Theia AI IDE
Offering full transparency, customizable prompts, and the freedom to choose and host preferred language models, Theia AI IDE extends the existing Theia editor to provide a suite of copilot options and agents, enabling developers to customize their tools and workflows with on-device or cloud AI solutions.
Builder: Jonas Helming
Expressive media and data visualization
Creative projects that find new ways to display data and media, making information easier to understand and more engaging.
- Ente
On-device semantic search and image recognition that provides users with private, durable, and reliable photo storage. Ente Photos is a fully open source platform for storing family photos securely.
Builders: Vishnu Mohandas & Laurens Priem
- Latent Scope
Designed to embed, visualize, cluster, and categorize data using the latest advancements in LLMs. Latent Scope features a pipeline tool for processing datasets and an exploration interface for visualizing and editing categorized data. It can operate entirely locally with open-source models or integrate with popular model providers.
Builder: Ian Johnson
- Tölvera
A creative tool for interactive art, Tölvera empowers artists to create and interact with dynamic, self-organizing systems. It is inspired by fields such as artificial life (ALife) and self-organizing systems. It provides creative coding-style APIs that allow users to combine and compose various built-in behaviors, such as flocking, slime mold growth, and swarming, and also author their own.
Builder: Jack Armitage