The startup Rabbit Inc's product has quickly captured consumer attention as a new way to interact with AI technology beyond smartphones and computers.

Rabbit, a company founded by Chinese tech entrepreneur Jesse Lyu Cheng, said its $199 R1 device, which debuted in Las Vegas alongside CES 2024 earlier this month, has sold out in all five rounds of pre-orders.

The Santa Monica-based company didn't have a booth at CES, but the orange device, which is as small as a palm-sized box, quickly became a popular addition to users' gadget arsenal.

Last week, the company said on X that it was starting pre-orders for a sixth batch of 50,000 Rabbit R1 devices, after the previous batch of 10,000 sold out.

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Handheld AI device, Rabbit R1 developed by Rabbit company. Photo: SCMP

Lyu, CEO of Rabbit, envisions bringing a dedicated AI assistant to billions of consumers. In the product launch video, the founder said that while recent advances in LLM (large language models) have made it easier for machines to understand humans, “these digital assistants still struggle to get things done.”

Collaborated with design firm Teenage Engineering, the bright orange device has a retro look, reminiscent of handheld game consoles from the 1990s.

The R1 Rabbit has a 2.88-inch touchscreen, incorporating a scroll wheel that can be pressed to access built-in functions, including voice control. Above the wheel is a rotating camera for taking photos and videos. The device weighs just 115 grams, easily fitting into the user's pocket.

Powering it is a 2.3GHz MediaTek processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The device does not require connection to another device to function.

But the real excitement of the R1 is its unique operating system, which is based on what the company calls a “big action model” — a proprietary platform model designed internally to understand user intent and behavior.

For example, after R1 records how a user interacts with a food delivery app or a ride-hailing app, the device can perform similar actions on command.

Since the R1 launch video was posted on YouTube on January 9, it has received more than 4.8 million views and 56,000 likes.

Rabbit had raised $36 million as of December from investors in the United States, Canada and South Korea, according to data from PitchBook, which tracks private equity deals.

CEO Lyu majored in financial mathematics in a joint program between Xian Jiaotong University in Suzhou and the University of Liverpool in the UK. He is also the founder of Timeet, a social media service that connects users based on their schedules. According to Chinese media, Lyu has twice been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs list.

Born in 1990 in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, Lyu is known as a tech entrepreneur star. Before Rabbit, he founded smart-home AI device maker Raven Tech in 2014.

The startup was acquired by Chinese AI and search engine giant Baidu in February 2017, a deal reported by Chinese media to be worth $90 million.

Like Rabbit, Raven is also a darling of venture capital firms and is the only Chinese company to receive funding from California-based US tech incubator Y Combinator.

(According to SCMP)

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