Introducing Rubric Labs
The bridge between AI research and products
- Our story
- The AI deployment gap
- What is an applied AI lab?
- Our journey and expertise
- Our vision forward
- Connect with us
After 18 months of building in stealth, we're excited to officially introduce Rubric Labs to the world. As an applied AI lab, we're on a mission to help companies deploy the next generation of intelligent software, bridging the significant gap between promising AI demos and production-ready applications.
Our story
Our story begins with three founders united by a shared passion: creating products that users truly love. We began our journey in the world of startups, working in the knowledge management, developer tooling and supply chain space. We took our learnings from these startups and boiled them into Rubric Labs, which we established with a clear mission—to build a lean team of problem solvers who care deeply about craft and use our collective skills for good. We recognized that our strength lies in our obsession with quality and our commitment to turning innovative ideas into practical, valuable solutions.
When GPT-3 emerged, we saw a realm of opportunity unlocked before us. What started as hacking together demos quickly evolved into something more significant as we recognized a critical gap in the AI landscape. The distance between creating an impressive AI demo and developing a robust, production-ready product remains substantial—and that's precisely the space we're working to fill.
The founders (left to right: Sarim, Ted and Dexter)
The AI deployment gap
Today the world of AI is rapidly evolving. There is cutting edge research being published by research groups consistently. If you're an avid Arxiv reader, you know exactly what I am talking about. There are 110 unique publications published just today in the AI category. Let that sink in.
Moreover, the amount of amazing demos we're seeing on platforms like 𝕏 and LinkedIn is uncounted for. The advent of coding formats like "vibe coding" have further increased the number of demos we see on a regular basis. But how many AI tools are we actually using? Not a lot. The gap between an amazing demo and a product that works in production still remains significant.
Why does this gap exist? That's a topic for another day, but we see the same thread of problems with AI demos: reliability challenges, scale and performance issues, integration complexity, data knowledge gaps, and data flywheel challenges. These challenges create significant barriers for companies seeking to harness AI's potential. Without specialized expertise, organizations either settle for suboptimal implementations or abandon promising AI initiatives altogether. This is where Rubric steps in.
What is an applied AI lab?
It's helpful to first define what an applied AI lab is. A traditional AI lab is associated with research and model providers come to mind, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. Whereas an applied AI lab is focused on building products. The focus is geared towards the application layer versus the model layer.
As an applied AI lab, we operate at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and practical implementation. We combine research-backed methodologies with hands-on development expertise to create AI solutions that work reliably in real-world environments.
Our journey and expertise
We've been fortunate to partner with some of the most innovative technology-first companies in the industry. Our collaborations with companies like Gumloop, Graphite, and Trigger, to name a few, have allowed us to tackle challenging problems at the cutting edge of AI implementation.
Beyond these public partnerships, we've worked with several stealth startups, where we've built natural language interfaces that allow users to access complex information, take actions, and generate customized dashboards on the fly. We've also partnered with Fortune 500 companies in the retail sector to develop conversational AI agents with multi-tool capabilities and long-term memory for enhancing customer experiences.
Our portfolio spans from early-stage startups to enterprise-level organizations across multiple industries, including fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce. In each case, we've delivered custom AI solutions that address specific business challenges while meeting rigorous production standards.
Working closely with these forward-thinking organizations has deepened our expertise and validated our approach to bridging the gap between AI research and production. We have also shared some of our work in the open. We're strong advocates for open-source and contribute whenever possible. We wrote about designing an agent for production back in 2023 in partnership with LangChain and Cal.com. We wrote about building specialized video agents in partnership with Graphite. We are also the creators of create-rubric-app, a boilerplate template for getting started with full-stack AI apps quickly.
Our approach is different from a conventional consulting company because we are first and foremost product builders and secondly, we take an active role in building out these solutions. More specifically our approach includes:
- Research integration:
Translating the latest academic breakthroughs into practical applications
- Production excellence:
Building systems that meet enterprise requirements for reliability, security, and scale while prioritizing first-principles thinking
- Problem-first thinking:
Focusing on solving genuine business challenges rather than deploying technology for its own sake
However, the truth is that not everything works in AI systems today—and we've experienced this firsthand. We've had our fair share of solutions that didn't work, but that's part of the experimentation process. Unlike a traditional consultant who would maintain a pretense of being always right, we position ourselves as truth seekers and builders. We experiment in a problem space with our clients to truly push the envelope on what's possible. We value transparency above everything else. Trust is at the foundation of our organization. In turn, this has been instrumental in refining our approach to system design and implementation, ensuring that we build solutions that not only work in demos but thrive in real-world applications.
Our vision forward
We believe we're at a pivotal moment in the evolution of software. AI is transitioning from an interesting feature to a fundamental component of how applications are built and experienced. At Rubric Labs, we're committed to helping companies navigate this transformation successfully.
Our team brings together expertise in software engineering and product development to deliver solutions that aren't just technically impressive but create genuine business value. We're also pursuing this vision in the open – writing technical guides on our blog and publishing open-source projects on our GitHub.
Let's build the future, together
We're excited to partner with forward-thinking companies ready to leverage the power of AI in their products and operations. Whether you're looking to enhance existing applications or build entirely new AI-powered experiences, we'd love to hear from you.
Visit our website to learn more about our approach and services, or reach out directly through our contact form to start a conversation about your AI journey.
Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay updated on our latest work and insights into the evolving AI landscape.
The future of intelligent software is here, and we're thrilled to be building it with you.
