Julius Lipp

Brief

My journey as a Founder started when a surfing accident left me in bed for a few months. I had way too much time to think and realized I really want to build something that matters. When I ended up at Google, I got to see how fun software engineering can be—especially when you're on a team that's genuinely passionate about what they do. We worked on LLMs early (that same team is now building Google Gemini), and that experience opened my eyes to how big AI could be.

Fast-forward to now: I co-founded Mixedbread with a friend who was already deep into representation learning since his second year of college. Our goal? Build the next generation of search so you don't have to duct-tape multiple specialized systems anymore. We want a powerful system that just works for every use case. Since launching, our open-source models have gained over 45 million downloads on Hugging Face—about 5.15% of all HF downloads in 2024 alone! It's crazy to see how a small, cracked team (props to them!) can push boundaries on par with top AI labs.

For me, the key is giving great people room to explore and build freely. When you let talented people run with their ideas, you often get results big teams can't even dream of. I'm always up for chatting. If you're interested in AI, IR, engineering, or might want to join the journey, I'd love to connect. Reach out via LinkedIn or X.