Ask HN: Anyone building a non AI product/startup?

5 points·codegeek··4 comments

AI is an exciting technology that is surely changing the world. But I would love to know if anyone is building non AI stuff in 2025. At least not primarily AI.

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Yes! No interest in AI whatsoever. I'm building a free and open source, self-hosted social platform for local communities.

- The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...

- A build update and plan: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

- The repository: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat

- The project board: https://github.com/users/carlnewton/projects/2

Safelyx [1] is automated content moderation tools. It started off just doing checks against many known URL databases/lists, running antivirus, and the likes, though for more recent products it incorporates AI (somewhat for source code analysis, a lot for message and image analysis). Started late 2024.

bewCloud [2] is a simpler Nextcloud alternative (FOSS, self-hosted). Nothing AI there. Started late 2023.

Budget Zen [3] is end-to-end encrypted budgets and expenses (FOSS, self-hosted). Nothing AI there as well. Started early 2021.

[1]: https://safelyx.com

[2]: https://bewcloud.com

[3]: https://budgetzen.net

https://blebbit.app

Community Spaces on ATProto

(blend of discord, reddit, and fb groups)

Yep.. https://devunus.com a blend of feature flags, analytics and reliability for your apps.

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