03 FEB 2026 ·News
AI in 2026: How We Learned to Build Smarter
From a side project to an AI-powered studio — what three years of building with AI taught us.
Gemma
AI development company · UK
AI development company in the UK
AI products, built end to end.
An AI development company in Newquay, Cornwall, building AI-native products for UK founders, startups and SMEs, where AI is the reason the product exists.
Talk to us What you get
Everything a new AI product needs to actually ship.
Building an AI-native product takes design, engineering, infra, evals, and a launch plan, all moving together. Here's what a full build with us looks like.
01
Product design and UX
We design the whole product: flows, screens, interaction patterns, and the AI behaviour itself. Designed around how people use AI tools, rather than retrofitted from a dashboard template.
02
Full-stack product engineering
Frontend, backend, data layer, auth, billing, and the AI pipeline, all built by the same team. One group of people is accountable for the whole product, with no handoffs between contractors.
03
Evaluations and observability
Eval harnesses from day one so you know whether each release is actually better. Logging, traces, and dashboards for prompts, tool calls, costs, and latency, so the product gets sharper as it meets real users.
04
Infra and cost controls
Hosting, queues, model routing, caching, rate limits, and per-customer cost guardrails. The unsexy stuff that keeps an AI product working at 10 users and at 10,000, without surprise bills.
05
Launch and go-to-market support
Marketing site, onboarding, pricing, analytics, Product Hunt assets, launch sequencing. We've launched our own AI product, Chat Thing, so we've seen what makes a difference on day one.
06
An ongoing product partnership
After launch we stay on as your product team, shipping new features, tuning prompts and evals, watching the metrics, and helping decide what to build next.
How we work
6 week product cycles that always launch.
Build your vision with our 6-week product cycles. A small senior team, AI-amplified end-to-end, geared up to launch your idea in six weeks.
Why 6 Weeks? It's the Goldilocks Zone - Striking the perfect balance between allowing enough time to build something meaningful, while being short enough to keep risks low!
Whether its an MVP, prototype, or feature in a existing product, our 6 week cycles make sure you have something tangible at the end of the project.
Sounds cool! Tell me more01: Discovery
Refine your ideas and plan what will be launched in 6 weeks.
02: Kick-off
We get cracking. Design, code, and AI work happen in parallel from day one.
03: Check-in
On week 3 get ready for an exciting demo of progress.
04: Build & Iterate
Continue work and integrate feedback from the check-in.
05: Pre-launch
A check-in before launch to tie up loose ends and get ready.
06: Launch
The big day is here, you idea is launched to the whole world.
Use cases
AI development services we offer.
- 01
Vertical AI SaaS
Full products built around a specific industry (legal, healthcare, finance, property, recruitment). Domain-shaped UX, domain-shaped data, and AI tuned to the work people in that field actually do.
- 02
AI-native writing and collaboration tools
Editors, assistants, and workspaces where the AI is the core loop rather than a sidebar. We build the interaction model, the document model, the multiplayer layer, and the model orchestration as one product.
- 03
Voice-first products
Apps where the primary interface is talking. Discovery calls, coaching, language tools, accessibility products. We design the conversational flow, build the real-time stack, and wire it into the rest of the product.
- 04
AI tools for niche professional workflows
Software for the specific job that nobody's bothered to build for yet (ops, research, compliance, education, creative production). Built in close partnership with people who do the work, so the product fits the workflow instead of fighting it.
- 05
Internal AI products for teams
Standalone internal products (not a Slack bot, an actual app) that change how an ops, research, or support team works. Owned by you, integrated with your stack, and built for the people inside the company. If the job is a workflow rather than a whole product, AI automation might be the quicker route.
- +
Got something different?
Tell us about your use case. We'll come back with a straight answer about whether it's something we can help build.
Recent work
All work AI products, shipped to production.
Chat Thing is our own product, designed, built, and run by the same team you'd work with. Alongside it, recent client products like HeyYou and Orbit. Every lesson from running our own thing feeds straight back into the work we do for clients.
DesignAIDevelopment
Chat Thing
Chat Thing is our first in house product that allows users to create magic AI chatbots
AI AutomationsAI product developmentAI
Building HeyYou a production AI security platform in 8 weeks
HeyYou had a working AI prototype. Pixelhop built the launchable product: a multi-tenant platform with deep Axis camera integration, all live in 8 weeks.
DevelopmentDesign
Building Quantum, the Foremost continuous-improvement product
Foremost teased Quantum at a trade show. Demand was overwhelming. We had three cycles to ship it across 22,745 sites and 2,098 cleaning companies.
Writing
All writing What we've learned building it.
Gemma
30 JUN 2026 ·AI
Don't make me use filters: the AI pattern we keep reaching for
Agentic search pairs a conversational AI assistant with a live, interactive canvas, so customers describe what they want instead of wrestling with filters. A repeatable AI-native search pattern, shown across three niches.
Jozef
12 JUN 2023 ·Side projects
The story of Chat Thing - Bootstrapping our first side project to £5000 MRR in under 3 months
Pixelhop's Chat Thing is an AI bot platform that allows users to create bots without coding knowledge. The platform was created in under a week, launched in under a month, and reached 5,500+ users with £5,000 MRR in under 3 months. The team built a waitlist, invited users in small batches, and received support from Seth Godin and Dave Winer. Despite facing competition, the team plans to continue adding features and improving the product.
Jozef Pricing
What it costs.
Most builds run in six-week cycles at £27,000 + VAT. That's a small senior team designing, building and launching one clear outcome. Most AI products fit in one cycle; bigger products run over two or three.
Smaller one-off jobs are quoted individually at our day rate of £650 + VAT, even if it's only a couple of days' work.
Not sure what you need yet? We start with a discovery week (£3,250 + VAT) and finish it with a fixed-price proposal for the build.
After launch, many of our clients stay with us on a monthly retainer for support and improvements. Model, API and hosting costs are separate, and you can see them on the cost dashboard from day one.
FAQs
AI development FAQs.
How long does it take to build an AI product?
Typically 4 to 12 weeks for a launch-ready MVP, depending on scope. Bigger products with more surfaces, more integrations, or stricter compliance needs run longer. We'll scope it honestly at the start rather than promise a date we can't hit.
What's the engagement model: project, retainer, or equity?
Usually a fixed-scope build for the initial MVP, then a monthly product partnership once it's live. We've also done equity and revenue-share arrangements for the right founders. We'll talk through what fits before any contracts.
Do you handle design as well as engineering?
Yes. Product design, UX, branding, the marketing site, and the engineering all come from the same team. You don't need to hire a separate agency for the design or coordinate handoffs. It's one group of people end to end.
Do you handle infra and deployment?
Yes. We set up hosting, CI/CD, model routing, caching, queues, and the cost and rate-limit guardrails an AI product needs. We work with the providers that make sense for your stack rather than pushing one default.
What happens after launch?
Most clients keep us on as their product team. We ship new features, tune prompts and evals against real usage, watch the metrics, and help decide what's worth building next. If you'd rather take it in-house, we hand it over cleanly.
Can you help with launch and go-to-market?
Yes. Marketing site, onboarding, pricing pages, analytics, Product Hunt assets, launch sequencing, early-access programmes. We launched Chat Thing ourselves, so we've been through the same loop you're about to run.
Can we hire AI developers from you instead of a whole team?
We work as a small senior team (design, engineering and AI together) rather than supplying individual developers. If you already have a product team, we can work alongside them on the AI parts. Our AI integration work is usually the better fit for that.
When shouldn't we build an AI product?
If AI isn't the reason someone would use the product, it's probably a normal software build with an AI feature, and that's cheaper to do another way. We'll say so before you spend anything.
How much does it cost?
Most projects fit in one six-week cycle at £27,000 + VAT. Smaller jobs are quoted at our day rate of £650 + VAT, and a discovery week is £3,250 + VAT. See What it costs for the detail.
Do you work with businesses outside Cornwall?
Yes. We're based in Newquay, and most of our clients are elsewhere in the UK. We work remotely, with the kick-off, week-three check-in and launch on video calls.
How do you handle our data?
We're UK GDPR compliant. At the start of a project we agree what personal data the work needs, where it's stored and who can access it, and we build to that.
Now booking
Got a product to build?
Tell us what you're trying to ship. We'll come back with a straight answer.
Start a conversation