Rabbit's CEO Jesse Lyu saw his software engineers heavily using Claude Code and wanted a portable computer specifically designed for vibe coding. The problem was straightforward: existing small laptops had poor keyboards. "They all come with shitty rubber dome keyboards," Lyu said of low-cost PCs like Chromebooks, which use flexible silicone sheets under keys to save money.
The result is Project Cyberdeck, a device Rabbit is aiming to sell for about $500. The company is designing the machine from scratch, drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the Sony Vaio P, an ambitious netbook that largely failed commercially. Sony's netbook was available only from early 2009 to about the end of 2010, and at the time it was the world's lightest netbook at 1.4 pounds, but it had a host of issues. In 2009, the most affordable Vaio P would set you back $900, or about $1,365 adjusted for inflation.
Rabbit's approach avoids the trap that sank the Vaio P by keeping costs down and focusing on what matters. The company wants to build a device powerful enough that it won't feel slow when communicating with Anthropic and OpenAI's servers, but affordable enough to make it a no-brainer purchase for developers.
The specifications remain fluid. Rabbit still needs to decide on a chipset, aiming for performance relative to the Raspberry Pi 5 with its quad-core Arm Cortex A76 processor, and hopes to match the Pi 5's ability to run two external monitors with 16GB of RAM. Two parts Lyu hopes are major differentiating factors are the keyboard and screen. The company confirmed Project Cyberdeck will run Linux and will allow users to modify the operating system and install any third-party tools they want.
The timing matters. Rabbit's founder Jesse Lyu says the company is on a "redemption arc" following the R1, which was released in 2024 but received mixed to extremely negative initial response. Users responded well to R1's vibe coding feature, which inspired him to think about what a dedicated vibe-coding device designed for heavy workflows could look like.
Component shortages pose a real risk. The entire industry is dealing with datacenter demand for high-bandwidth memory that has sent the price of computers, smartphones and other electronics soaring. Lyu believes Rabbit won't be forced to delay the Cyberdeck out of 2026, but he also didn't rule out the possibility.
The question of whether a dedicated device is necessary looms. You don't need a dedicated machine to access Claude Code or OpenAI Cursor, and even companies like Apple have begun integrating vibe coding services into their development environments. Yet 90% of developers now use AI coding assistants, indicating the market for purpose-built tools may be substantial enough to justify the effort.
Rabbit is pivoting from a consumer AI gadget strategy toward developer-focused hardware. The shift reflects both hard-won lessons from the R1 launch and a genuine recognition that specialized tools matter when workflows demand it. Lyu is working again with Teenage Engineering, the design firm that partnered with Rabbit on the R1, developing form factors inspired by cyberdecks, a term originally used in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer to describe a portable computer, but now refers to small, retro-inspired computers built by hobbyists. Whether the Cyberdeck succeeds or repeats the netbook era's mistakes will depend on whether developers truly want to carry a second device when their existing laptops can already run the same tools.