By T.M. Brown
Publication Date: 2026-08-17 08:10:00
Unless you have a passionate opinion about your preferred artificial intelligence model, it’s likely the clothes that multi-billion dollar companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic and Cohere are suddenly churning out aren’t meant for you. You likely aren’t going to be wearing Perplexity’s padded ecru jacket with a corduroy collar and a “Curious” fabric tag ($135) or Cohere’s “Stacking Stones” T-shirt ($41) with “The Material of Now” printed across the back. The same goes for OpenAI’s “Research” half-zip sweatshirt ($175), to say nothing of Palantir’s royal blue chore coat ($239). (Those are both sold out anyway.)
Tech industry types have gone all in. “Unfortunately cool as hell and I need it lol,” Rachel Tobac, CEO of the cybersecurity firm SocialProof Security, wrote on X after seeing OpenAI’s newest collection in July. “Good to see that tech merch isn’t boring anymore,” wrote Haimantika Mitra, a developer advocate at the cloud computing company Digital Ocean.
Ben King, a design director at OpenAI, said his team wanted to take cues from those boosters about exactly what they would be excited about in a piece of clothing. “We wanted to create cool, thoughtful items that reflect our product while also engaging with our own community and seeing what they’re wearing,” he said. Most of the clothing King saw on…