ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs: one developer mapped the whole numbered-labs trend
A developer knew of ElevenLabs, the speech synthesis company, then heard from a friend about TwelveLabs, which does AI for video. Suspecting TwelveLabs was a deliberate riff on ElevenLabs but unsure, the author jokingly searched "thirteenlabs" and found an unrelated AI startup working on 3D scenery. A search for "fourteenlabs" turned up yet another AI startup, which prompted the question of how far the pattern extends.
To find out, the author built an interactive page listing the numbers 0 through 99, each annotated with links to companies that pair that number with "labs" as a name, using a background color to mark which of those companies are AI-related. The exercise raised more questions than it answered: why the naming scheme is so popular, whether founders are arriving at it independently or copying each other, why a company would specifically choose a name like "68labs", and why numbers in the seventies cluster with far more matching companies than other high numbers. None of these questions is answered in the piece; the author states them as open puzzles. The author also jokes about speculatively buying up unclaimed domains such as "twentyfivelabs" or "thirtytwolabs".
One discovery singled out for its charm: seventyonelab.com, a site that still carries the old "all rights reserved" boilerplate and politely notes it is best viewed in Netscape 4.0+ or Internet Explorer 5.0+. The author describes it as looking like an early-2000s design and web-development portfolio, with a landing page and a "little project" section whose look reminded them of the "vectorheart" aesthetic seen on 2000s IDM album covers.
Key facts
- The pattern started with ElevenLabs (speech synthesis) and TwelveLabs (AI for video), then continued with AI startups turning up under "thirteenlabs" and "fourteenlabs" searches.
- The author built an interactive visualization covering numbers 0 to 99, each linked to companies pairing that number with "labs", with AI-related ones marked by a background color.
- The seventies cluster far more densely with matching company names than the rest of the higher numbers, a pattern the author notes but leaves unexplained.
- The author flags seventyonelab.com, an old-style site reading "best viewed in Netscape 4/0+ or IE 5.0+" that evokes an early-2000s web design portfolio.
- The author jokes about speculatively registering unclaimed domains such as "twentyfivelabs" or "thirtytwolabs".
Why it matters
It is a small, funny piece of evidence for how much startup naming, especially in AI, converges on the same template. Seeing the pattern laid out across a full 0-99 grid makes a trend that felt like a passing joke (ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs) look like an actual convention that many founders reach for independently or by imitation, without anyone quite explaining why.
Who it affects
Mostly people who enjoy internet trivia and anyone about to name a startup and wondering if "NumberLabs" is already taken. It carries no direct consequence for AI products, users, or markets; the value is observational, not operational.
How to use it
The page itself is the artifact: browsing it for the specific number a reader cares about, or comparing which numbers skew AI-related, is the whole use case. There is no product, price, or service being offered here beyond the visualization the author published.
How solid is it
It rests on one person's manual search-and-link exercise rather than any survey or dataset explaining the naming trend's origin. The author is upfront that the central questions, why the scheme is popular and whether founders copy each other, remain unanswered; nothing in the piece resolves them.
Risks and caveats
This is a lighthearted personal find, not research: the "AI-related" marking is the author's own judgment call per company, and the density in the seventies is reported without a cause. Treat the observations as a curiosity rather than evidence of anything systematic about how AI companies choose names.
“best viewed in Netscape 4/0+ or IE 5.0+”
— seventyonelab.com