"AI is too important to outsource”, says CEO

Thunderbolt is an open-source ‘AI client’ from Mozilla’s for-profit arm

Thunderbolt is a new open source AI client from the Mozilla-owned MZLA Technologies aimed at enterprises who want to run self-hosted chatbots on their own infrastructure.

MZLA Technologies is the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that develops and maintains the Thunderbird email client. It says Thunderbolt was created with the support of a grant from Mozilla.

Terrible name aside (Intel owns a trademark for ‘Thunderbolt’ which Apple markets heavily, so it’s not the best choice for clarity), the LLM that MZLA Technologies asked to write their press release says that Thunderbolt is a “sovereign AI client” for organisations who want their own AI infrastructure.

Companies can use Thunderbolt to interface with whichever AI model they use, be that a pricey cloud-based ‘frontier’ model or a local open-source one running on their own servers, ‘on-prem’.

It can connect with their internal data using Deepset’s Haystack framework and industry-standard protocols like MCP and ACP for orchestration – i.e., to allow AI to ‘automate workflows and tasks’ by talking to an org’s own software and ferreting through its data.

“AI is too important to outsource”, says Ryan Sipes, CEO of MZLA Technologies. “With Thunderbolt, we’re giving organisations a sovereign AI client that allows them to decide how AI fits into their workflows – on their infrastructure, with their data, and on their terms.”

Users can “interact” with the underlying AI for chat, research and their tasks through a web client or native applications for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

However the GitHub FAQ confirms that a managed hosted version enterprises can pay for is planned for those who don’t want to deploy it themselves.

An AI client anyone can host

Thunderbolt is not aimed at regular desktop users though nothing prevents you from using it locally as it is open-source with the code up on Github.

With Mozilla’s pivot to AI all about making money it won’t shock you to hear that whilst the code is open source and anyone can deploy it for free MZLA expects to pull in revenue through enterprise deployments.

“MZLA will provide professional services and support for enterprise customers who require assistance with deployment, integration, and custom feature development” reads the announcement.

Interesting though this is, no-one should rush is blindly. The tech is described as being in development and in the middle of a security audit to ‘prepare for enterprise production readiness’. Worth looking over the telemetry it gathers on an opt-out basis, too.

Those interested in learning more on Thunderbolt (before its inevitable name change) can visit the Thunderbolt website and signup to the wait list for access details.