I
What is Thinking Studios
Thinking Studios is the first AI studio.
We are not a research lab, we are not a tech company. We are not an agent shop, we are not frontier model builders.
We are something different, and that difference is grounded in the people who make it.
Kim Jeong Ha is the Founder & CEO of Thinking Studios. At his core, he is a creative whose expression of that creativity has taken many forms. He has been:
- A concert pianist
- A behavioral economist
- A Michelin-starred chef
- A data scientist
- A PhD candidate
- A startup founder
And his creativity is central to the heart of Thinking Studios itself, its ethos, its team, and its own articulation.
II
What Thinking Studios believes
Most of artificial intelligence today is built for everyone and fits no one. The frontier labs have done something genuinely astonishing — they’ve turned intelligence into a commodity that serves no audience. And after hundreds of billions of dollars poured into it, their “digital god” can’t even get the date right. Their “solution” is anything but — it cannot answer a user’s specific problems and cannot achieve their desired goals.
A general, commodified intelligence is a solution for everyone that fits no one. Only a deep commitment to understanding a single user — whether they are a person, a Fortune 100 brand, or a multinational NGO — and their problem can AI then be designed with a precise solution in mind.
AI is also not here to replace the human experience — it is here to supplement it. Partnership rather than replacement. Thoughtfulness rather than utility. A digital twin is not intelligence designed to help you.
The starting point is cognition. The most intelligent AI is not the one with the most raw capability. It is instead the one that combines the superhuman abilities of a machine with the cognition of a person. Holding a problem in abstraction and reasoning with it. Knowing what it knows and being willing to admit what it does not. And working towards achieving a goal rather than mindlessly completing tasks. Prompt chains and tool calls are not a path forward. Commodified AI is not a panacea.
Thinking Studios stands alone — we start with your problem before getting to a solution. We focus on the present instead of promising a future that may not come to pass.
III
Why a studio
What typifies us as a studio
- We build, design, and curate AI to provide precise solutions to specific user problems.
- We look for collaborators and Partners with no secrets withheld between us.
- We understand our technology’s limitations and express them plainly with our prospects, clients, Partners, and public.
- We believe in solving today’s problems — hallucinations, forgetfulness, lying, and sycophancy — before trying to promise the future.
- We respect our users with a deep commitment to honesty, thoughtfulness, and intention.
- We treat our employees with that same respect and commitment as we treat our clients.
And what we are not — an AI lab
- They manufacture one product that cannot solve any specific problems because their solution has no precision.
- They obfuscate and mystify their models to a hilarious degree.
- They believe they’ve created “digital god” and both revere and fear it in equal measure.
- Their entire business model is predicated on devaluing the present and its problems for a future that may never come.
- They have contempt for their users believing things like “spicy chatbots,” targeted advertising in their products, and digital twins are what they want — without asking what their problem is to start.
- They try to replace their employees with the very product they’re tasked to create.
Our North Star is a combination of the premier research lab on intelligence, DeepMind, and the premier design studio for brands across the globe, Pentagram. From the former, rigor — the pursuit of intelligence as a craft worth perfecting. From the latter, design — that the pursuit of intelligence means nothing without a purpose rooted in sharing it in ways that actually solve our clients’ problems. Both are necessary, not optional, in our approach, process, and beliefs.
Thinking Studios also represents our way of working — governed by values:
- Creativity is collaboration.
- Design is spiritual.
- Novelty is promise.
- Critique is consideration.
- Expression is progress.
And these values translate into the principles we live and work by:
- We admit that we are not experts in your problem, and that we require the time to become them.
- We treat time as the most valuable resource any of us has and refuse to waste yours or ours.
- We are honest with where we fit within your problems and goals and will let you know if it’s not a good fit for one or both of us.
- We focus on the one real problem at the heart of everyone who comes to us and do not propose solutions until that focus is precise.
- We are committed to you and ask for that commitment upfront to us so that we can advance the work together.
IV
How we work
Engaging with Thinking Studios always starts with a conversation. Before a commission, before a brief, we sit with you and ask two questions:
- What is your problem?
- What is your goal?
We take as long as a grounded, in-depth understanding of both requires. Occasionally we do not move forward — if we are not the right partner, we tell you immediately. Far more often, this is where the partnership begins.
The first mechanism is a commission.
We specifically call it a “commission” as a nod to the creative process involved in its crafting, design, and articulation. A commission is not optional. It is instead the necessity that makes everything that comes after fit. It is also a reflection of the time we take to understand you deeply and to value the work honestly.
What the commission produces is a custom Umma tailored to your problem to achieve your goal.
Umma is a custom operating system designed for your problem, your people, and your circumstance. It is a cognitive system shaped with your goal in mind — one that does not hallucinate, forget, lie, or flatter. Your Umma is uniquely yours and much of it is built by Umma itself upon us introducing your problem and goal to it. This is your first real glimpse at what our technology can do for you.
If you are satisfied with your custom Umma, she then becomes yours to license. Your Umma stays with you, grows with you — per user, per year — and expands as more of your people make it theirs as well and it learns the shape of your work. If you are ever unhappy, we rebuild it, remold it, or you return it to us, full-stop.
V
How we seek Partners
We use the word Partners deliberately, and hold it separately from our current and future investors. A Partner owns a stake in and actively shapes Thinking Studios with us. It is not a quid pro quo but a true working relationship with both sides bound to the same success, values, vision, and intent. Its shape is undefined at the start intentionally — because we have not yet defined it together. The first work of any Partnership is to sit down and decide what it is, the same way we sit with our clients to learn from and understand them.
That is the patience we bring to everyone we Partner with, because we are assured that we are working towards one vision. That vision — where AI is in service of people, their problems, and their goals. A personalized AI that is built to support, help, and guide rather than replace.