ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs

Look, I get it — naming a company is hard. You want something that sounds scientific, forward-thinking, and vaguely mysterious. But the AI industry has turned "Labs" into the tech equivalent of "Burger" — slap it on anything and suddenly you're a serious player. ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs... at what point does this become a parody of itself? The article at https://quantumi.sh/public/labs.html nails the absurdity of this trend, even if the title alone does most of the heavy lifting. Here's the thing that actually gets under my skin: these names aren't just lazy, they're actively misleading. A name like "ElevenLabs" implies some kind of systematic, numbered approach to research — like they're on iteration eleven of something profound. In reality, most of these companies picked a number because it sounded cool or because the domain was available. It's branding theater dressed up as scientific rigor, and the HN crowd clearly ate it up with 118 comments of debate. The deeper problem is what this says about the industry's relationship with substance. We're in a gold rush where perception often outpaces reality, and a slick name with "Labs" in it can buy you credibility you haven't earned. Meanwhile, actual open source projects with meaningful, original names struggle to get noticed because they don't fit the corporate AI aesthetic. It's a race to the bottom of originality, and the only winners are the branding agencies. That said, there's a meta-joke here that's worth appreciating. The fact that someone wrote a piece called "ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs" and it got nearly 400 upvotes suggests we're all aware of how ridiculous this has become. We're laughing at ourselves, which is healthy. But at some point, the laughter needs to turn into actual scrutiny — because if you can't be bothered to come up with an original name, what does that say about your willingness to do original research? Source: https://quantumi.sh/public/labs.html