Founded in 2017 in the Netherlands, on an unfashionable premise: do the research first, and let companies happen to it.DKAI Lab was founded in 2017, in the Netherlands, on an unfashionable premise: do the research first, and let companies happen to it — not the other way around.
The lab formed around capsule networks and activation functions. Two research lines later held for good: the EarthScan lineage (2020→2023) and HOMINIS → RealAI. The lab stays small, independent, upstream of both.
The lab formed around capsule networks. Huadong Liao, who worked with it, had put one of the first TensorFlow implementations of Hinton's paper online within days, and it is still the most-starred of them. The years after were spent where attention was not: activation functions, neuroscience-inspired learning rules, microscopy vision, and the stubborn problem of making seismic models survive contact with new basins.
Two of those lines held. EarthAdaptNet became VeerNet became EarthScan, an independent company reading the subsurface across 8,500+ wells. Project HOMINIS, a foundation model built for procedural competence rather than scale, became RealAI. The lab remains what it was: small, independent, upstream of both.
