Qanata Labs - Building the infrastructure layer AI is missing
Independent Build Lab  ·  Open-Core Infrastructure

Building the infrastructure layer AI is missing.

AI is being deployed faster than the tools to govern, monitor, and trust it are being built. Qanata Labs works on that gap - in the open, one project at a time.

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3 Active projects in the lab
Open Everything starts open-core
Practitioner-led Built by people with the problem
AI is being deployed faster than the infrastructure to govern it is being built. The people who understand that gap most clearly are not vendors - they're the practitioners living inside it every day.

Enterprise vendors are selling governance frameworks to buyers who don't fully understand what they're buying. The resulting tools are compliance theatre, not operational reliability. Qanata Labs builds from a different position: the inside out, practitioner-first, in the open.

Three gaps the industry hasn't closed.

Each one compounds the others. Together they explain why AI is failing silently in production environments across every regulated industry.

01 - The Speed Gap

Adoption is outpacing the tooling around it

Organisations are deploying models into production workflows before the infrastructure to monitor, govern, and trust those outputs exists. Silent failures are the result.

02 - The Vendor Gap

The tools aren't built by the people with the problem

Vendors are selling governance to buyers who don't understand what they're buying. The result is compliance theatre. The failure modes remain invisible.

03 - The Practitioner Gap

The knowledge exists. The tooling doesn't reflect it.

Developers, architects, and knowledge workers know exactly where AI fails in their workflows. That knowledge isn't making it into the tools - yet. That's what we're fixing.

What's in the lab right now.

We incubate focused infrastructure tools. Some will become products. Some will inform the ones that do. All of it is open.

Active
ThinkHere
Privacy-First AI

AI chat that runs entirely in your browser. No servers, no API keys, no data leaves your device. Runs open-source models locally via WebGPU.

In Dev
Human Coordination Plane
Agent-Human Infrastructure

Async coordination layer between AI agents and human decision-makers. Agents request approvals with full context; humans respond via web or Slack; every transition is audit-logged.

In Dev
The Whipping Post
AI Crawler Intelligence

Open dataset tracking AI crawler and agent behaviour in real time. Identifies and logs AI user agents as they crawl, building a longitudinal record traditional analytics can't see. Watch this space: the bots are feeding it faster than we are.

Built by people who've been on both sides of the problem.

One AI architect and information scientist. One enterprise technology leader who started as a developer. Between us, 30-plus years building, selling, and shipping technology at Microsoft, Cisco, Autodesk, and Oxford University Press - and two startups built from scratch.

Co-Founder
Isaac Pattis

Currently leading AI strategy and implementation at Oxford University Press, where he builds the frameworks and technical infrastructure that turn emerging AI capabilities into products learners and teachers can trust. Previously in Microsoft's Cloud + AI division, where he developed hands-on understanding of how ML systems operate at enterprise scale. His background in information architecture and data quality gives him a perspective that is rare in AI leadership - a deep grounding in the structures that determine whether AI actually works in production.

Microsoft Oxford University Press LLM Evaluation Information Architecture Agentic AI
linkedin.com/in/isaacpattis
Co-Founder
Mark Alani

Marketing and growth leader with 30 years across startups, scale-ups, and global technology companies. Started as a developer - C, assembly, and systems software - before moving into sales and go-to-market roles at Microsoft, Cisco, and Autodesk. Has held executive roles including CMO and CRO, and built revenue teams from the ground up at two startups. Brings the commercial instinct and enterprise relationships that turn infrastructure tools into businesses.

Microsoft 14yrs Cisco Autodesk Kaseya 2x Startups
linkedin.com/in/markalani
Qanata Labs
kah-NAH-tah  ·  /kəˈnɑːtə/

Qanata takes its name from the qanat - an ancient system of underground channels, engineered to carry water safely and continuously across harsh terrain to the communities that depended on it.

The engineering was invisible. The delivery was reliable. The system was built to last.

That's what good infrastructure does. That's what we're building for AI.

Everything starts open. Because the practitioners who understand this problem best should be able to inspect, fork, and build on the work.

contact@qanatalabs.com