Late 2022. The world has just met AI, everyone wants in, and nobody owns the market yet. That gap is yours.
LLM Tycoon is a strategy-tycoon about building an AI company the hard way: one model at a time, one scandal at a time. Either you carry the world into the age of superintelligence, or somebody else does.
Your models have personalities. That's the problem.
Honesty, safety, tone, depth. Set the sliders however you like. Play it safe and reviewers call your model boring. Let it off the leash and it says something the press will never let you forget. Push a slider all the way to the end and strange things start to happen. Your rivals wrestle with the same sliders, and their hidden ideals leak into scandals of their own.
Six ages, from chatbots to whatever comes next
The race runs through six ages: Chat, Scale, Multimodal, Agentic, Superintelligence, Ascendancy. Each one changes the rules. New markets open, acquisitions become possible, and eventually the crises begin. Getting there first matters. Surviving it matters more.
Steel, silicon, and 75 cities
Pick a headquarters. Put datacenters where power is cheap and regulators are friendly. Haggle over chips, or sign with a foundry and skip the line. When your models are good enough, design a consumer device and put them in everyone's pocket. The map holds 30 countries, and every one of them wants something different from you.
The market doesn't wait
Set your prices, win contracts, grow an app ecosystem on top of your models. Market share is won country by country, and lost the same way. Rivals launch their own models, undercut you, and take whatever you leave undefended.
Rival CEOs with opinions
On Chirp, the in-game social feed, rival CEOs hype their keynotes and mock your launches. Sometimes they implode in public instead. Enjoy it while it lasts. You're one bad release away from being the main character.
The unofficial routes to the top
Build intel dossiers. Steal research through a hacking minigame. Buy shares in a rival, or buy the whole company. Go public, take out loans, ride your valuation. It all works, right up until it doesn't.
Governments notice
Run diplomacy campaigns and keep the right countries on your side. The Dominance Index tracks your grip on the world across four fronts, and there are titles waiting at the top. The world doesn't hand them over quietly.
It all happens on the real timeline
World events land on their actual dates. Decision chains branch the way they do in EU4. History bends around your choices, until superintelligence arrives with problems of its own.
Features
- A tycoon sim of the AI race, from the first chatbots to superintelligence and beyond
- Model training with character sliders, plus the scandals and strange incidents they cause
- 30 countries and 75 cities: datacenters, a chip market, foundries, and your own consumer devices
- Demand, prices, regulation, and market share managed per country
- Ad campaigns and an app ecosystem built on your models
- Rival CEOs with their own models, ideals, and scandals, plus a social feed to broadcast them
- Espionage, hacking, and technology theft
- Shares, acquisitions, IPOs, and bank loans
- Diplomacy campaigns and a four-front Dominance Index with world titles
- World events on real dates and EU4-style decision chains
- Six ages that each unlock new mechanics
- Full localization in 7 languages
Add it to your wishlist. The race won't wait for you.
