distributed-ai
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David Stout
David Stout is the co-founder and CEO of webAI, an Austin-based company building private, on-device artificial intelligence that runs on hardware people already own instead of centralized cloud data centers. Raised on a cattle ranch in northern Michigan, he taught himself to compress large AI models onto phones, laptops and edge hardware, and founded webAI in 2019 with Ethan Baird and Tyler Mauer. The company reached a $2.5 billion valuation in January 2026 on the thesis that the most valuable AI of the future will be sovereign, distributed and local rather than rented from Silicon Valley hyperscalers.
webAI
webAI is an Austin-based sovereign AI company that lets enterprises build, train, and run custom AI models on their own local hardware instead of the cloud. Founded in 2019 by David Stout, Ethan Baird, and Tyler Mauer, its end-to-end platform - spanning the Navigator development environment, the Companion assistant, and webFrame clustering software for Apple silicon - keeps sensitive data on-device while delivering cloud-grade intelligence. The company reached a reported $2.5 billion valuation in early 2026 and serves customers across healthcare, retail, logistics, and aviation.