Waterloo, Canada
It started in a dorm room.
SimpleDirect was born as a fintech company in a dorm room near Lester Street and the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario.
About SimpleDirect®
A new chapter. The same conviction.
From fintech in Waterloo to AI in Toronto. We build toward responsible, safe, useful AI for people, businesses, and governments.
Our story
Small beginnings. A bigger purpose.
Toronto, Canada
A new chapter in AI.
SimpleDirect became an AI company, focused on model development, safety, and making AI useful in everyday life and meaningful work.
Independent by choice
The freedom to focus on what matters.
Bootstrapped and entirely self-funded, we entered this chapter with the independence to pursue work we believe will advance responsible, safe, and useful AI.
That means developing models, studying their limitations, and sharing what we learn—including where the results fall short.
Our approach to safetyVinci by SimpleDirect®
From AI you can own to models with global ambition.
Small enough to be yours.
We’re developing small models for computers and phones, working toward AI you can run on your own device without a server.
Ambitious enough to go further.
Our model development also looks toward large Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, with the ambition to compete at a global level.
Leadership
Building from Toronto.
An independent team in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
George Pu
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO. Building Vinci and training Piccolo and Bozza, our own open-weight models. Writes about building independent AI at Founder Reality.
Founder Reality
Vikas Grover
COO & CFO
Leads operations and finance, with a background in Canadian startups, a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, and experience as an Air Canada commercial pilot.
Ayush Naik
Technical Lead
Technical lead. The infrastructure and systems underneath everything else — the part that decides whether what sits on top of it stands up. Would rather test something new than read about it.
SimpleDirect® is operated by Alpine Pacific Trading Inc. in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Vinci names the research and technology developed within that organization.
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