A slab that leans toward you.
Ameka One is the computer we're designing to keep a frontier AI model on your desk. It's a slab of nickel-plated copper with a copper chimney inside. It has no fan and makes no sound, and it leans 3° toward whoever sits beside it.
It hasn't been built yet. We're designing it now and raising money to build it. Every image here is a render of the design, not a photograph.
One slab of copper. One chimney inside it. One aqua light. One copper key. Nothing else.
The whole machine is the heatsink. Cool air comes in at the base, warms on twenty copper fins, and rises out through the crown. It needs no fan because the chimney does the work. It has no buttons, no logo and no screen. It's closer in spirit to a turntable or a watch movement than to a computer.
It leans 3°.
From across the room you see a slab. From a few meters you notice it leans, just 3°, toward you. Up close you see the brushed grain run top to bottom on every face, without a break. There's no logo anywhere on the body.
One light. One key.
Everything you touch is on top. A sapphire window holds the only light, a thread of aqua. Behind it, a fine grille lets the warm air out. At the back, a slot takes the Key.
The only light
A 14 × 2 mm sapphire window, set 0.5 mm below the surface. It glows while the machine is awake and goes dark when it isn't.
The chimney's mouth
An oval field of 1.1 mm holes on a 1.6 mm pitch, about 44% open. The copper rim you can see is the chimney wall.
How you wake it
Stand the Key's long edge in the slot. The machine checks the Key's signature, which takes about 25 milliseconds, and wakes.
No fan. A chimney.
Cut the machine open and you find a copper chimney running from base to crown. The chip is bonded to its back wall through a vapor chamber, and twenty copper fins carry its heat into the air. Warm air rises out of the crown and pulls cool air in at the base. Nothing moves.
A box this size with no fan can only shed so much heat, and physics sets the limit, not ambition. Our first-pass model gives about 150 W. The chimney is how we plan to beat today's fanless machines. Seven kilograms of copper also soak up short bursts above that. If the test rig disagrees with the model, we'll publish the result and change the design.
A key that ages with you.
Every Ameka comes with one Key. It's solid copper, 28 × 18 × 4 mm, and knurled on its long edges. Inside is a secure chip that holds a private key. The machine's body is plated and will look the same in fifteen years. The Key is bare copper, so it tarnishes. Two weeks in a pocket give it a patina no other Key has.
Two finishes. No more.
Mineral is the copper body plated in nickel and brushed, a warm silver. Obsidian adds a dark PVD coating over the nickel, a gunmetal. Both sit on the same aluminum-bronze base.
| Finish | Body | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Mineral | Nickel-plated copper, brushed · warm silver | Aluminum bronze |
| Obsidian | Dark PVD over nickel, brushed · gunmetal | Aluminum bronze |
| Founder | Mineral, with its serial number inlaid in 14k gold · first 100 units | Aluminum bronze |
The numbers, as targets.
Nothing here has been measured yet, because nothing has been built. These are the targets the first prototypes have to hit.
| Property | Target |
|---|---|
| Form | |
| Height | 312 mm, including the 14 mm base |
| Width | 240 mm at the crown, 236 mm at the base |
| Depth | 92 mm at the crown, 88 mm at the base |
| Lean | 3.0° forward |
| Mass | 7.2 kg |
| Vertical edges | 6 mm radius |
| Seam, body to base | 0.05 mm |
| Materials | |
| Body | Oxygen-free copper, nickel-plated, brushed top to bottom |
| Base | Aluminum bronze (C95400), brushed across |
| Chimney and fins | Bare copper, 20 fins |
| Window | Sapphire, 14 × 2 mm, set 0.5 mm below the surface |
| Feet | Three fluorosilicone pads, 22 mm |
| Heat and sound | |
| Sustained power | 150 W, no fan |
| Chip temperature | Under 95 °C at 150 W in a 25 °C room |
| Noise | Under 18 dBA at 30 cm |
| Key | |
| Size and mass | 28 × 18 × 4 mm, 18 g |
| Material | Bare copper, diamond-knurled long edges |
| Security chip | 1-Wire secure authenticator with an ECDSA key |
What we won't do.
Each of these protects the form.
- No fan. Not even a backup.
- No logo on the body.
- No light except the aqua thread.
- No plastic anywhere a finger touches.
- No screen and no touch surface.
- No exterior screws.
- No power brick. The power supply is inside.
- No HDMI, SD slot, audio jack or USB-A.
- No tool-free upgrades. It's sold complete.
- No paper manual.
- No render passed off as a photograph.
- No colorways and no artist collaborations.
What the seed round builds first.
Ameka One is a design today. We're raising a seed round to build it, and the first money goes to four tests. They decide whether the design survives contact with real copper.
Thermal test rig
A copper chimney and fins with a 150 W heater where the chip will go. If it can't keep the chip under 95 °C in a 25 °C room, the design changes before any silicon does.
Full-size foam model
A block the right size and weight, lived with on a desk for two weeks and adjusted by feel, not by calipers.
Key samples
Ten bare copper Keys, carried every day and photographed every week to see how they age.
Seam study
Bodies milled at three seam gaps (0.05, 0.10 and 0.20 mm) to find the point where the seam disappears to the eye.
Every image on this page is a render of the design intent, made from the numbers above. None is a photograph, and no prototype exists yet. When real parts exist, photographs will replace these renders in Bench Notes.