AI Branding: What Makes an AI Startup Name Work

The first wave of AI branding leaned hard on literal cues — "bot", "neural", "brain" — which made sense when the category needed explaining.

As AI products mature, names that sound like precision tools (short, technical, slightly abstract) are aging better than names that lean on the novelty of "AI" itself.

A useful test: would the name still work if you removed every AI-specific word from your pitch? If yes, it will likely outlast the current hype cycle.

Domains that are short and technical-sounding without being literal give a product room to expand beyond its first use case.