⏱️ Lectura: 10 min
A catalog published on quantumi.sh documented a startup named ‘Labs’ for every number from 0 to 99, and most of them sell artificial intelligence. The pattern started with ElevenLabs, the voice cloning company, and from there it replicated number by number until it had covered nearly the entire scale.
📑 En este artículo
The discovery began as a joke: someone searched for ‘thirteenlabs’ on Google expecting to find nothing, and a real startup building AI-generated 3D set design showed up instead. That was enough for a developer to wonder how far the phenomenon went, and he ended up mapping Labs startups for 100 different numbers.
TL;DR
- A catalog on quantumi.sh documented Labs startups for every number from 0 to 99.
- The pattern started with ElevenLabs (voice) and continued with Twelve Labs (video) and Thirteen Labs (AI-generated 3D set design).
- The author flagged as AI only the companies with a .ai domain or a core product built around AI.
- The 70-79 range concentrates more Labs startups than the rest of the higher decades, according to the original catalog.
- seventyonelab.com is a 2000s web design site that’s still online, not an AI startup.
- The author considers buying available domains like twentyfivelabs.com before someone else does.
- The inclusion criteria require ‘labs’ to appear before or after the number, either as a digit or spelled out.
What Happened
The author of the personal blog quantumi.sh put together a list of the numbers from 0 to 99 and searched, for each one, for a company that combined that figure with the word ‘Labs’. The result is striking: practically every number already has an owner. The initial spark was hearing about Twelve Labs, an AI startup for video, and noticing the obvious wordplay with ElevenLabs. Curiosity led to searching for ‘thirteenlabs’ on Google, which turned up Thirteen Labs, focused on generating AI-powered 3D set design. Then came ‘fourteenlabs’, and at that point the author decided to document the entire phenomenon, number by number.
The criteria for adding a company to the original catalog was simple: it had to have some online presence (not necessarily its own site) and the word ‘labs’ (or ‘lab’) had to appear before or after the number, whether as a digit or spelled out. When several candidates showed up for the same number, the author picked the one that most closely resembled ElevenLabs, on the assumption that the similarity revealed where the founder got the inspiration.
Context and History
ElevenLabs, the voice synthesis and cloning company, popularized the ‘Number + Labs’ format within the generative AI ecosystem. The name sounds technical without being generic, and ‘Labs’ carries prestige dating back to Bell Labs, the research laboratory that invented the transistor and laid much of the groundwork for modern computing. Associating a startup with the word ‘labs’ is, at its core, borrowing that serious-research credibility without having to earn it from scratch.
What surprised the catalog’s author wasn’t that Twelve Labs existed, an obvious pun, but that the pattern kept working well beyond the first few numbers. Companies with names like ‘SixtyEightLabs’ or even higher figures also turned up in the search, suggesting that numeric naming became an independent convention among founders who probably never crossed paths.
Technical Details of the Pattern
A few concrete observations can be drawn from the catalog. First, not all Labs startups are artificial intelligence companies: the author only highlighted the ones with a .ai domain or a core product built around AI, a criterion he himself admits is subjective, because “every company today wants to look like an AI company.” Second, the seventies range (70 through 79) concentrates notably more Labs companies than the rest of the higher decades, something the author points out without finding a clear explanation for it.
There’s also a distinction between startups that use the digit form (’13Labs’) and those that spell the number out (‘ThirteenLabs’), which in practice doubles the possible combinations per number and explains why the catalog ended up being so extensive. And not all the results are active sites: the most striking case is seventyonelab.com, a web design portfolio that, alongside the typical ‘all rights reserved’ notice, still recommends viewing the site with Netscape 4.0+ or Internet Explorer 5.0+. It’s not an AI Labs startup: it’s an early-2000s design relic that survived untouched.
| Naming Strategy | When to Use It | Advantage | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number + Labs | Young startup that wants to sound technical and memorable fast | Easy to remember, short domain | The pattern is nearly exhausted from 0 to 99 |
| Descriptive word + Labs | Product with a clear category (voice, video, 3D) | Communicates what the company does | Longer names, .com domains already taken |
| Invented name | Brand aiming to build its own identity | No prior associations, a fully original brand | Requires more marketing investment to position it |
| Acronym + Labs | Spinoff of an existing research project | Inherits recognition from the original project | Not very intuitive for those unfamiliar with the acronym |
📌 Note: the original catalog’s ‘AI-related’ criterion is explicitly subjective: a .ai domain or a core AI product. The author himself warns that almost any startup today could claim that label.
flowchart TD
A["ElevenLabs (voice)"] --> B["Twelve Labs (video)"]
B --> C["Thirteen Labs (3D)"]
C --> D["Fourteen Labs and beyond"]
D --> E["0-to-99 catalog on quantumi.sh"]How to Try It Yourself
You can reproduce a smaller version of the catalog yourself with tools you already have installed. The first step is confirming whether a domain following the number+labs pattern is registered, using nslookup, available natively on Windows, macOS, and most Linux distros (on minimal Debian/Ubuntu installs it may require sudo apt install dnsutils):
# macOS / Linux
nslookup twentyfivelabs.com
# Windows (PowerShell or CMD)
nslookup twentyfivelabs.comIf DNS resolution fails (messages like NXDOMAIN or “can’t find”), the domain is probably still available. If it returns an IP, something is running there.
To scale the search to several numbers at once, this Python script goes through a list of English number words and reports which ‘labs’ combinations still don’t resolve in DNS:
import socket
NUMEROS_EN_INGLES = [
"zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven",
"eight", "nine", "ten", "eleven", "twelve", "thirteen", "fourteen",
]
def dominio_libre(nombre):
try:
socket.gethostbyname(f"{nombre}.com")
return False
except socket.gaierror:
return True
for numero in NUMEROS_EN_INGLES:
candidato = f"{numero}labs"
estado = "FREE" if dominio_libre(candidato) else "TAKEN"
print(f"{candidato}.com -> {estado}")The script doesn’t replace a real check with a domain registrar (a WHOIS lookup can show a domain as ‘reserved’ even if it doesn’t yet resolve in DNS), but it works as a quick first filter before manually reviewing all 100 numbers.
💡 Tip: before registering a domain with the Number+Labs pattern, run the DNS check: several high numbers (70 through 99) still appear available according to the original catalog.
Impact and Analysis
The phenomenon matters for what it reveals about Labs startup naming in the generative AI era: when thousands of founders look for a short name, with an available .com domain, that sounds like a serious research lab, they end up converging on the same formula without coordinating with each other. It’s a case of cultural convergence, not direct copying: nobody is literally imitating ElevenLabs, but everyone is solving the same problem (sounding technical, being memorable, having an available domain) with the same solution.
The catalog’s own author admits the exercise raised more questions than answers for him: why the scheme is so popular, whether founders arrive at it independently, and why the seventies range in particular concentrates so many coincidences. He also confesses the temptation to buy domains like ‘twentyfivelabs.com’ or ‘thirtytwolabs.com’ before someone else does, a form of speculation on an entire naming pattern rather than on a single brand.
What’s Next
As the catalog circulates, the open question is how long the trend lasts. If every number from 0 to 99 already has an associated Labs startup, the next logical move for a founder chasing the same effect is to jump to three-digit numbers (‘OneHundredLabs’) or migrate to a completely different naming formula altogether. There’s also the question of whether someone will try to grab the domains for the numbers that are still available purely for the pattern’s speculative value, something the original catalog’s author already hinted at.
📖 Summary on Telegram: View summary
Try it yourself: run this article’s Python script against the numbers 0 through 20 and see how many Labs domains are actually still available today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the NumberLabs Catalog?
It’s an informal project published on the quantumi.sh blog that documents a Labs startup (or a site with that name format) for every number between 0 and 99; it’s not a company or a product of its own.
Why Do So Many Startups Use the Word ‘Labs’?
Because it associates the brand with serious research, a prestige inherited from historic laboratories like Bell Labs, and because combined with a short number it often leaves the .com domain available.
Are All the Numbered Labs Startups AI Companies?
No. The catalog only flags as AI the ones with a .ai domain or a core product built on AI; there are exceptions, like Thirteen Labs, focused on AI-generated 3D set design, and sites that aren’t even active startups, like seventyonelab.com.
Who Started the Numeric ‘Labs’ Naming Trend?
The documented starting point is ElevenLabs, the voice cloning company, followed by Twelve Labs (AI for video) and Thirteen Labs (AI-generated 3D set design).
Can I Reproduce the Catalog Myself?
Yes. With nslookup or a script like the one in this article, you can quickly check which number+labs.com combinations still don’t resolve in DNS, though it’s worth confirming with a domain registrar before drawing final conclusions.
Are There Any Numbers Left Without an Associated Labs Startup?
According to the original catalog, most numbers from 0 to 99 already have some company or site associated with them, though the author himself acknowledges that some domains for higher numbers still appear available to register.
References
- quantumi.sh: ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs, …: the original catalog that documented Labs startups from 0 to 99.
- ElevenLabs: official site of the voice synthesis company that originated the naming pattern.
- Bell Labs (Wikipedia): history of the research laboratory that popularized the prestige associated with the word ‘Labs’.
- seventyonelab.com: the 2000s web design site that appears in the catalog as a curiosity, not as an AI startup.
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Imagen destacada: Foto de Avtar Singh en Unsplash
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