Inference CEO Sam Hogan announced the open-science initiative Project AELLA on Tuesday. Nine hours later, he changed it to Project OSSAS.
In the hours leading up to the change, Hogan learned that Aella wasn’t just the name of an “open-science initiative to make scientific research accessible via structured summaries created by LLMs,” as the company described it. It was also the name of a famous OnlyFans model, sex worker, and Substack researcher.
“Thank you to those who brought the context surrounding this name to our attention, and to our partners and the research community for their ongoing support,” Hogan wrote on X.
Aella reposted Hogan’s renaming: “Lmfao.”
In 2020, Aella was in the top 0.04% of OnlyFans creators in terms of monthly revenue generated, telling Business Insider that she made up to $100,000 a month. She is also an escort. On the “Dating Talk” podcast in February, Aella said that she charges $4,000 for the first hour, and then $1,000 for every additional hour.
Now, Aella makes most of her money through research, she said on the podcast. Aella launched the Substack “Knowingless,” which analyzes sex and relationships via data mining. Her approach has taken off within tech circles. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called one of her ideas “fantastic.”
The naming debacle sparked a broader conversation between Hogan and Aella.
“I didn’t know who you were until today,” Hogan wrote. “Now I do! Love your work.”
“Your work seems great too!” Aella responded. “I love ppl working on making science better.”
Hogan’s Inference closed an $11.8 million seed round in October, per PitchBook. The round was led by Multicoin Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
On LinkedIn, Hogan described Inference as “the world’s largest GPU cluster for LLM inference.”
The exchange between Hogan and Aella seems to have ended with an opportunity for collaboration. “Would be cool to do visualizations for some of your surveys,” Hogan wrote. Aella responded: “I’d love that!”
There are also signs that the name change itself may be short-lived.
“After seeing your work I don’t think naming this project AELLA is crazy at all,” Hogan wrote. “If you’re open to it, could we have your blessing to change the name back?”
Aella responded that he was welcome to, though “it might be confusing/googleable issues for people tho.”
She suggested an alternative: “maybe some mild modification AELLA-B or something idk?”
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