Why Is Sakana Different From OpenAI?

Alex Zhang says Sakana is different from OpenAI because it is a research lab, closer to a PhD group than a company with a model everyone uses. The team is very smart and branched off from an earlier group at GDM that worked on open-ended evolutionary research. While he was there, Sakana did not have a big competitor model in wide use, and it does not operate in the same space as OpenAI or Anthropic.

He still likes the lab after the GPU kernel mishap that people cannot forgive. Criticism of the AI scientist work sits outside his lane, so he offers no take on it. David Ha is really smart. The market in Japan is a little different, and who Sakana targets is slightly different from what people are used to here. A lot of the research looks weird, and he wants more weirdness in the work. Sakana also has a model specialized for Japanese. Responses are tuned to how people speak culturally. It is not frontier on benchmarks. It is a culturally appropriate model, and they also have chat.