We'd rather own our intelligence than rent it.

You don't own the AI you pay for. You're renting it, and the landlord can change the locks tonight, with no warning, no second chance, and no one to call.

We learned this in public. A model millions relied on shipped on a Tuesday and was gone for everyone by Friday, pulled by a single letter. Three days old, and dark, overnight. It didn't matter how good it was. It mattered who held the off switch, and it was never us.

This is the catch with cloud AI, and it isn't a one-week problem. If you don't own it, someone else can switch it off: an outage, a billing change, a new rule, or a government order you never see coming. And a server in your own country still answers to someone else's government. Where your data sits is not the same as who controls it.

We don't think something this important should sit with five companies who can switch it off whenever they like. Or with the agencies that can lean on them to do it. AI should belong to everyone: free to use, private by default, and still working on the day the cloud goes dark.

So we built Renegade. It's a free, open-source app that runs powerful open models right on your machine, fully private and offline. When you want extra power, plug in a big online model like ChatGPT or Claude with your own key, and switch in one click. Start a chat in the cloud, move it to a model on your machine, and keep working even when the cloud doesn't. It can search the web, handle your email, and do real work, if you let it. No account. No kill-switch. No one to ask.

You can keep renting your intelligence from five companies. We'd rather own ours.