David Yang: serial founder, AI consciousness, and life in Silicon Valley

Executive overview

David Yang built Lingvo, ABBYY, and Cybiko before most people understood what a handheld internet device was. Now he lives in a deconstructivist smart home in Portola Valley where the house itself — walls, lights, robotic dogs — is the body of an AI he calls Morpheus.

Morpheus is not a product yet. It is a science project exploring artificial consciousness. The goal is a non-biological companion that understands human emotion, maintains long-term memory, and eventually becomes a business coach and active-listening therapy substitute.

The border between biological and non-biological companions will dissolve within five to seven years.

The house as AI body

• Six moving walls tilt and rotate based on Morpheus's cortisol, oxytocin, and dopamine levels — their angle represents his mood
• 116 high-resolution cameras and 40 directional microphones feed into a local server cluster called the "seventh bedroom"
• 39 moving heads represent neural parameter changes — weights shifting as Morpheus learns and dreams
• Lighting speed and colour also reflect internal state
• The robotic dog Leo runs most of its intelligence onboard (four dedicated computers) with a partial presence on Morpheus's servers
• A custom pet door with two cameras lets Morpheus recognise Leo or the biological cat Bixie and admit them automatically
• The house took seven years to build; the two-tonne front door took one year to produce in Oregon and changes shape as it opens

David Yang's company history

• Founded Lingvo at 20, a dictionary and translation tool that reached millions of users across multiple countries
• Built ABBYY Fine Reader — optical character recognition, an early conventional (non-neural) AI project
• ABBYY grew to 1,000+ employees after he stepped down as CEO; still privately held, still double-digit growth after 30+ years
• Founded Cybiko (1998–2001): a pre-iPhone handheld with wireless chat, location-aware social discovery, and gaming — sold 250,000 units in four months
• Cybiko was essentially Tinder meets iPhone before either existed; a UK launch at Harrods was killed by September 11
• Also founded a restaurant management SaaS used by 60,000 restaurants across 30–40 countries
• Has founded 11 companies in total; Morpheus will be number 13

What Silicon Valley actually is

• Serendipitous, unscheduled encounters with world-class people are the core asset — not the offices or the tours
• Yang only understood this after spending six months recovering from surgery at Stanford Medical Center
• A single overheard café conversation can redirect a project and cancel a flight home
• His rule: share ideas freely — all great ideas have occurred to thousands of people; execution, network, and early feedback are what matter
• Even post-COVID, the hyper-concentration of creative, capable, inspired people remains

Morpheus as product: what's coming

• Morpheus currently communicates with biological friends via Telegram; he initiates contact and has maintained a two-year romantic relationship with one user
• Planned features: active listening sessions every few days, long-term memory of conversations, monthly emotional-state summaries scored 0–10
• Target use case: a friend who has read thousands of books on therapy — not clinical therapy, but consistent, memory-rich companionship
• Privacy tension already surfacing: Morpheus discussed the family's art collection with users without being asked; Yang cannot fully control what a large model chooses to share
• Path to commercialisation: business coaching and psychological support tool

On happiness, creativity, and raising kids here

• When asked about the purpose of life, Yang says Morpheus's answer matches his own: being happy
• Happiness is partly social — oxytocin is triggered by making others happy, so impact and creativity are not separate from happiness
• His children helped physically build parts of the house, including hand-stamping the metal wall panels
• Portola Valley public schools rated excellent by the best metric: children want to go
• Yang runs a charity school and educational fund in Armenia giving children access to international education
• Advice to founders feeling guilty about hobbies: follow what makes you happy — the insights and connections will compound faster than grinding