I'm under 18, broke, and I just designed an open-source AI chip. Here's the full story.

I don't have a team. I don't have funding. I don't have a lab. I have a laptop, an internet connection, and an obsession with chips. This is the story of T1C - Tier 1 Chip - and why I built it. It started with a frustration. Every time I read about AI hardware, it was the same story. NVIDIA charges $30,000 for an H100. TSMC charges millions for a custom fab run. Apple Silicon is beautiful but completely closed. Intel, Qualcomm, AMD - all of them - locked behind NDAs, closed architectures, and billion-dollar relationships.