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Can This Sandwich-Sized Device Bring AI to Every Office Desk?

Over the past few years, I’ve helped countless business clients introduce AI into their workflows. And let’s be honest—most of what’s out there is over-engineered, cloud-dependent, wildly expensive, and loaded with data privacy red flags. But then I came across something refreshingly different: a handheld device called Lemony AI. It’s small—about the size of a sandwich—but it just might change how organizations adopt artificial intelligence.

Unlike the typical “AI in the cloud” approach, Lemony AI is truly self-contained. It doesn’t rely on external servers, doesn’t send your data anywhere, and doesn’t require a sprawling IT team to set up. Everything—from large language models to AI agents and workflows—runs locally on the device. Your emails, your documents, your client data? They never leave the box.

I recently introduced this device to a medtech client that had been hesitant about AI for years. Their number one concern? Sensitive patient data. When I explained that Lemony AI runs entirely offline and requires just 65 watts of power (less than most laptops), they immediately perked up. The real game-changer? You can stack multiple Lemonys to create an AI cluster, with each device running a different model. It’s modular AI infrastructure, with zero cloud dependency.

The story behind this device is just as compelling. Founders Sascha Buehrle and Ivan Kuleshov were tinkering with Raspberry Pi computers, trying to see if they could run language models on them. It wasn’t even about generative AI at the start—it was pure curiosity. But when they got it working, they realized something huge: running models locally could unlock AI for teams that didn’t want to—or legally couldn’t—send their data to the cloud.

So they built a device with one key philosophy: keep it small, private, and easy to adopt. No need for a company-wide strategy or C-suite approval. If you lead a small business unit, you can plug this in and go.

Each Lemony unit can support a language model with up to 75 billion parameters, and supports both open-source and customized closed-source models. Uptime Industries, the company behind it, has already partnered with IBM and JetBrains to offer users easy access to enterprise-grade AI tools, including IBM’s closed models. It currently runs on something called Lemony OS, and there are plans to expand compatibility with other hardware, like Nvidia’s DGX Spark, and to grow from single-user setups to team-ready solutions.

It costs $499 per month and supports up to five users—a price point that makes it accessible without committing to a six-figure cloud contract or years-long deployment plan.

To me, what’s most exciting is their anti-enterprise-enterprise approach. Lemony AI isn’t about locking companies into massive IT investments. It’s about enabling teams to experiment with AI in a secure, modular, and scalable way—without needing to wait for head office approval.

And for highly regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and law, this could be a tipping point. I’ve worked with large international clients where even pilot AI programs get tied up in months of compliance reviews. With Lemony, they can run tests, iterate locally, and scale when they’re ready—all while keeping their data securely in-house.

The startup has raised $2 million in seed funding led by True Ventures, with participation from JetBrains and Alumni Ventures. It’s not just early adopters who are interested—investors clearly see the potential for “cloudless AI.”

We’ve seen wave after wave of AI breakthroughs, from OpenAI’s dominance to the rise of open-source models. But many organizations are still sitting on the sidelines, either overwhelmed or skeptical. Lemony AI might finally offer them a way in—a realistic, secure, and scalable way to get started.

If you’re trying to bring AI into your organization without getting buried in red tape or security concerns, this might be the box you’ve been waiting for.