One Redditor built this $100K AI model giving MidJourney a run for its money
A Reddit creator spent 100,000 GPU hours to build Chroma 1 and released it for free, proving that passion and open-source AI can rival Big Tech.
When we think of cutting-edge AI models, we picture billion-dollar labs, armies of researchers, and rows of humming GPUs owned by Big Tech. But now and then, a project emerges from outside that elite circle built not for profit, but for possibility.
That’s what happened when a Reddit user quietly unveiled Chroma 1, an image-generation model trained on roughly 105,000 hours of NVIDIA H100 GPUs. By open-sourcing it under the Apache 2.0 licence.
The result? A grassroots AI story that proves passion can sometimes rival corporate power.
The high cost of independence
Training large-scale diffusion models is brutally expensive. The Chroma 1 developer admitted to spending the equivalent of over $100,000 in computing alone, a staggering number for an individual or small team.
Every hour of GPU time added up to one thing: belief. The belief that AI shouldn’t belong only to those who can afford data centres. Belief that creativity should remain accessible.
While most open-source projects rely on existing checkpoints or partial fine-tunes, Chroma 1 was built almost from scratch, a full-fledged foundation model trained on a diverse dataset designed to rival industry giants like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. In essence, this was a personal moonshot, not funded by a startup accelerator, but driven by a conviction that open beats closed.
Building speed into imagination
Chroma 1 didn’t stop at one model. The project expanded into variants — Base, HD, and the now-famous Chroma 1 Flash. Flash became a community favourite because it could generate high-quality images in just a few seconds, sometimes as few as 10 steps per render.
Creators experimenting with it in ComfyUI or AUTOMATIC1111 reported that the model produced respectable results at lightning speed, especially with low CFG (classifier-free guidance) values. Of course, there was a trade-off. Faster generations meant slightly less detail, and users noticed quirks with anatomy or textures. But that’s the nature of innovation: every optimisation brings a compromise.
Why spend so much and give it away?
It’s a question that puzzled many. Why would someone sink 6 figures into a model and then release it for free? The answer might lie in the spirit of open research. By making Chroma 1 publicly available, the developer created a foundation on which anyone could build: researchers, indie developers, and digital artists. It wasn’t about hoarding capability; it was about seeding creativity.
Much like open-source software decades ago, models like Chroma 1 represent a quiet resistance against the walled gardens of modern AI. The money spent wasn’t wasted; it was invested in collective progress.
Lessons from Chroma 1 for the next wave of builders
For creators and developers, especially in emerging tech communities like India, Chroma 1 offers three powerful lessons:
- You don’t always need to start big. Start open. Use available resources wisely and fine-tune existing models before building from scratch.
- Speed is the new currency. Models like Flash prove that efficient inference can matter more than microscopic quality improvements.
- Community builds momentum. An open licence, active discussions, and transparency around training create trust, something no amount of marketing can buy.
In Mumbai, Bengaluru, or anywhere else, this mindset can spark local innovation even without Silicon Valley-level budgets.
Beyond the numbers: what Chroma 1 really stands for
Chroma 1 is more than just an AI model; it’s a manifesto. It tells us that while corporations chase commercial dominance, individuals can still shape the future through openness and courage. Yes, it cost a fortune. Yes, it demanded compute power that would make most creators flinch. But in return, it gifted the community something priceless: freedom to build, remix, and imagine.