Type Safe AI, founded by former OpenAI researcher Diogo Almeida, has released its model "Jev" as a cheaper alternative to large language models like ChatGPT and Claude for certain tasks. The start-up, recently valued at $200mn, has drawn multibillion-dollar valuation offers of $10bn or more from potential investors. Jev, aimed almost exclusively at software developers, has gone viral on social media, with its launch video on X generating 40mn views in less than a week.

The company is betting that routine tasks currently handed to expensive general-purpose models can be performed by cheaper, more specialised systems, potentially pressuring the business models of frontier AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Jev does not produce sentences or images but promises fast, cheap decisions within software applications, such as approving or blocking requests and routing support tickets. James Hardiman, general partner at DCVC, which led Type Safe's most recent funding round, said the start-up was already profitable given the drastically lower computing costs for its product, making its model "orders of magnitude" cheaper to use than leading LLMs.