How Socrates came to be
In early 2025, our founders were frustrated. They were builders — developers, researchers, designers — who kept running into the same wall: incredible AI models existed, but turning them into usable tools required months of engineering work and thousands of dollars in infrastructure. Meanwhile, the tools that did exist were scattered across hundreds of disconnected platforms, each with their own onboarding, billing, and APIs.
There was no place where all AI lived. No hub. No standard. No marketplace where a non-technical person could discover and run a state-of-the-art AI tool in one click, and where the builder who created it could actually earn a living.
So we built it. Socrates launched in beta in January 2026 with 50 hand-picked builders and 500 tools. Within 30 days, it had grown to 10,000 tools and 200,000 users entirely through word of mouth. We knew then that we'd found something real.
Today, Socrates is the largest open AI marketplace in the world. We're just getting started.