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▲Launch HN: Cactus (YC S25) – AI inference on smartphonesgithub.com
52 points by HenryNdubuaku 4 hours ago | 24 comments
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cco 3 hours ago [-]
I've been using Cactus for a few months, great product!

Makes it really easy to plug and play different models on my phone.

If anybody is curious what a Pixel 9 Pro is capable of:

Tokens: 277- TTFT: 1609ms 9 tok/sec

qwen2.5 1.5b instruct q6_k

Sure, here's a simple implementation of the Bubble Sort algorithm in Python:

def bubble_sort(arr): n = len(arr) for i in range(n): # Flag to detect any swap in current pass swapped = False for j in range(0, n-i-1): # Swap if the element found is greater than the next element if arr[j] > arr[j+1]: arr[j], arr[j+1] = arr[j+1], arr[j] swapped = True # If no swap occurs in the inner loop, the array is already sorted if not swapped: break

# Example usage: arr = [64, 34, 25, 12, 22, 11, 90] bubble_sort(arr) print("Sorted array is:", arr)

This function sorts the array in ascending order using the Butbble Sort algorithm. The outer loop runs n times, where n is the length of the array. The inner loop runs through the array, comparing adjacent elements and swapping them if they are in the wrong order. The swapped flag is used to detect if any elements were swapped in the current pass, which would indicate that the array is already sorted and can be exited early.

HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the kind words, we’ve improved performance now actually, follow the instructions on the core repo.

Same model should run 3x faster on the same phone.

These improvements are still being pushed to the SDKs though.

cco 18 minutes ago [-]
Wow! 3x is huge.

I've had great experiences with gpt-oss20b on my laptop, a genuinely useful local model.

3x probably doesn't get my Pixel Pro 9 to being able to run 20b models, but its getting close!

pzo 3 hours ago [-]
FWIW They change license 2 weeks ago from Apache 2.0 to non commercial. Understand they need to pay the bills but lost trust with such move. Will stick with react-native-ai [0] that is extension of vercel aisdk but with also local inference on edge devices

[0] react-native-ai.dev

observationist 2 hours ago [-]
Open source for the PR, then switching to non-open licensing is a cowardly, bullshit move.

https://github.com/cactus-compute/cactus/commit/b1b5650d1132...

Use open source and stick with it, or don't touch it at all, and tell any VC shitheels saying otherwise to pound sand.

If your business is so fragile or unoriginal that it can't survive being open source, then it will fail anyway. If you make it open source, embrace the ethos and build community, then your product or service will be stronger for it. If the big players clone your work, you get instant underdog credibility and notoriety.

HenryNdubuaku 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Honestly, I’d be annoyed too and it might sound like an excuse, but our circumstance was quite unique, it was a difficult decision at that time being an open-source contributor myself.

It’s still free for the community, just that corporations need a license. Should we make this clearer in the license?

typpilol 2 hours ago [-]
Yes.

Just say that in the license.

HenryNdubuaku 1 hours ago [-]
Done, thanks, let us know anything else.
HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
Understandable, though to explain, Cactus is still free for personal & small projects if you fall into that category. We’re early and would definitely consider your concerns on license in our next steps, thanks.
mdaniel 2 hours ago [-]
For fear of having dang show up and scold me, I'll just add the factual statement that I will never ever believe any open source claim in any Launch HN ever. I can now save myself the trouble of checking, because I can be certain it's untrue

I already knew to avoid "please share your thoughts," although I guess I am kind of violating that one by even commenting

theturtletalks 1 hours ago [-]
I agree, I've seen so many products start open source to gain traction, get into YC, and then either go closed source or change the license. That's a bait and switch and I appreciate the comment pointing it out.

I downloaded Cactus a couple months back because I saw a comment, but bait and switch like this makes we want to look for an actual open source solution.

HenryNdubuaku 48 minutes ago [-]
The license change doesn’t affect you based on your explanation actually, the licence has been updated with clearer words. We really appreciate you as a user, please share any more feedback you have, thanks.
theturtletalks 34 minutes ago [-]
I don’t appreciate you dismissing my claim. When I installed Cactus chat months ago, the company was claiming that Cactus chat would allow users to connect to other apps on their device and allow them to be controlled by AI.

Your license change goes against that. You say it’s free for personal use but how many times do people create something for personal use and monetize it later? What if I use Cactus chat to control a commercial app? Does that make Cactus chat use “commercial”?

HenryNdubuaku 2 hours ago [-]
It’s absolutely fine to share your thoughts, that’s the point of this post, we want to understand where people’s heads are at, it’s what determines our next decisions. What do you really think? I’m genuinely asking so I don’t think mods will react.
nextworddev 2 hours ago [-]
Will this drain my battery
HenryNdubuaku 1 hours ago [-]
This was one of the issues we set out to solve, so not as much as you’d expect.
mritchie712 3 hours ago [-]
how many GB does an app packaged with Qwen3 600m + Cactus take up?

e.g. if I built a basic LLM chat app with Qwen3 600m + Cactus, whats the total app size?

HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
400mb if you ship the model as an asset. However, you can also build the app to download the model post-install, Cactus SDKs support this, as well as agentic workflows you’d need.
dcreater 3 hours ago [-]
Does it incorporate web search tool?
HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
It can incorporate any tool you want at all. This company’s app use exactly that feature, you can download and get a sense of it before digging in. https://anythingllm.com/mobile
VladVladikoff 3 hours ago [-]
How does this startup plan to make money?
HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
Cactus is free for hobbyists and personal projects, but we charge a tiny fee for commercial use which comes with more features that are relevant for enterprises.
dcreater 3 hours ago [-]
The first picture on the android app store page shows Claude Haiku as the model
HenryNdubuaku 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for noticing! The app is just a demo for the framework, so devs can compare the open-source models against frontier Cloud models and make a decision. We removed the comparison now so those screenshots indeed has to be updated.