AI Model Names Are The Worst (tier list)

There are only two hard problems in AI: building consciousness and apparently... naming things.

So today, I'm ranking every major AI model name from S-tier to VC-funded tech bro tier.

The Tier List

OpenAI

OpenAI

Three mysterious letters, a dash, and THEN a decimal number? AND then a size? Horrible.

This is a name that a machine would invent, which makes sense because the company is run by Alt-Man.

Don't even get me started on GPT-4o Mini Deep Research. It's MINI but DEEP? That's like calling something 'Tall Short Grande Venti Research'. Clear as butter.

OpenAI is in the F tier.

Qwen

Imagine getting a PhD from Stanford, working on the bleeding edge of literal machine intelligence... and naming it Qwen3-235B-A22B. This is stronger than my password. This is the Sony of AI model names.

Mistral

Leave it to the French to name their AI after a cold Mediterranean wind. At least they're honest: it's literally full of air.

But their model is called Mixtral 8x22B. They changed ONE letter. That's like Samsung releasing the "Samsong" phone.

Databricks

Databricks

Pretty sure DBRX is a shady crypto exchange and not an AI name.

Gemini

Google has always been consistent with its naming. They went from Wallet to Android Pay to Google Pay... then back to Wallet again.So of course their model is Bard... wait... I mean, Gemini. Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite.

Next year we'll get Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite Pro Max in Pink.

DeepSeek

For something seeking so deeply, they didn't look very hard for a name.

Grok

Grok sounds less like intelligence and more like what a cave goblin croaks when he hands you a riddle.

Which makes sense given it's from the company that renamed itself to a letter. Buuuut, B Tier for pronounceability and no numbers.

Claude

Meanwhile, Anthropic names theirs after poetry: Haiku, Sonnet, Opus.

What's next, Limerick?

There once was an AI named Claude
Whose naming was terribly flawed

Imagine telling your boss you want to pay for Haiku. Pretentious, but at least pronounceable.

Llama

Finally, some companies actually get it right. Meta's main models are great. Llama? Perfect and absurd. It's an actual name of a THING and it has LLM built into it.

Imagine telling your date you use Qwen3-235B-A22B. They're going to ask if you've had a stroke.

Compare that to "I use Llama", they'll start talking about how cute llamas are, and boom, suddenly you're not talking about AI on a date like a weirdo.

Aleph Alpha

"Supreme Control"? They're not even hiding their delusions about world domination anymore. Absolutely unhinged, deranged... perfect.

The Final Ranking

Conclusion

If you're an AI company thinking about naming your next model VXW-555-Max-Pro-Ultra-Lite, just ask yourself: "Would I be embarrassed saying this out loud?"

I know as an AI company you're not used to asking this question or... feeling any kind of shame.

I believe in you. Not much, but a little.

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