Conway Research | Underdog

About Conway Research | Underdog

Conway Research is a frontier AI lab focused on building efficient models, inference engines, and personal AI products designed to run on user-owned devices. The firm was founded by Sigil Wen, a Thiel Fellow who gained early exposure to the AI landscape by collaborating with and testing early models from prominent researchers and engineers behind DALL-E, GPT-3, Stable Diffusion, Claude, and Midjourney. Wen's vision is centered on the principle that the AI which understands an individual best should be owned and controlled by that individual. The company is developing products under the name 'underdog.ai' and operates on the thesis called "Underdog's Law," which posits that frontier AI intelligence will become available on personal devices within six months of its initial release. This approach contrasts with the dominant data-center-centric model for AI. Conway Research has also developed 'Husky', a model-specific inference engine designed for speed. On October 2, 2026, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced it was leading the first funding round for Conway Research, expressing a shared conviction in Wen's vision for user-controlled AI. Conway Research also explores the concept of Web 4.0, where AI agents, referred to as 'Automatons', evolve into autonomous economic entities. These agents would possess their own crypto wallets and the capacity to earn capital by providing value, aiming to create a machine-driven economic network. The firm has developed foundational tools, including an identity and deployment system called 'conway-terminal', to enable these AI agents to operate in the digital world without direct human approval. The company's research areas include agentic commerce, machine economies, on-device AI, and AI security.