Kirt McMaster knows that his new operating system—Kora—won’t be for everyone, and he’s fine with that.
Kora, announced on Tuesday, is designed as a desktop alternative to Windows or macOS for “the AI native, not mass market,” he says. McMaster, the company’s CEO and cofounder—who also cofounded Boost Mobile—likens his strategy to how Steve Jobs targeted creators when overhauling desktop publishing with the Mac.
This “next-generation” desktop OS can integrate context from user interactions across multiple AI tools. Targeted to creators and developers, Kora’s central idea is to bring AI models together at the system level and help power users interact more seamlessly with multiple providers, rather than siloing everything off into desktop apps and browser tabs. It’s scheduled to launch sometime in 2027.
By tapping into your data and context at a machine level, Kora could streamline some of the current speed bumps of using AI tools on a desktop. “All your context, all your memory is on your machine,” says Franck De Girolami, one of Kora’s cofounders. He gives the example of someone designing a project with an OpenAI model inside Kora’s interface, switching to Anthropic’s tools to deploy code, and leaning on a local model to save money on AI tokens.
Kora is a standalone operating system built on the Linux kernel that runs directly on hardware. The startup has partnered with Qualcomm to bring Kora to Snapdragon PCs next year, but it also supports x86-64 architecture, so you can likely install it on current Intel- or AMD-based PCs.
To bridge the software gap, built-in compatibility layers will allow users to run standard Windows apps. The company is also developing its own native apps for basics like contacts, calendar, and email, alongside a software development kit (SDK) for third-party developers. Along the bottom of the home screen is a dock, as you would expect on a desktop OS. This is where users can switch between email, web browsing, and launching games.
The OS is designed around what the startup calls a “neural file system.” Based on example screenshots, the user experience may feel like messaging a chatbot or AI agent. File data is indexed by meaning so you can ask questions about the broad context of files by typing into an OS search bar, without necessarily looking up specific file names. For example, you could search for a business contract saved somewhere on your device based on a small detail you remember.
Kora grew out of McMaster’s startup Playtron, which launched its own gaming OS, GameOS, last year. GameOS is primarily built to run on portable handhelds, like a Steam Deck, with PC support as well. That architecture now lives inside Kora as GameFrame, letting users run PC games—provided their hardware can keep up.
The broader pitch caters to PC gamers and power users. “That’s always our thing—next-generation creators who are using these tools daily to build new applications and services, but they want everything else that they can get from a Windows PC or what’s currently available on macOS,” McMaster says.
Taking on the giants is difficult, especially with a team of under 100 people, but Kora’s leadership knows a thing or two about launching operating systems. Kora’s three founders—McMaster, De Girolami, and John Lagerling—each bring their own expertise. McMaster cofounded and helped lead Cyanogen, an open source Android fork that gained millions of users before shutting down around a decade ago. De Girolami helped develop Playtron’s GameOS. Lagerling previously worked on Android at Google.
Kora isn’t the first to rethink the desktop operating system in the AI age. Google launched its Googlebook OS and compatible laptops in October, designed around Gemini AI. Even so, McMaster doesn’t see that OS and its Android support as satisfying power users who want to run AI models that require serious chip power. The company is optimizing Kora for desktop configurations with at least 64 gigabytes of RAM, which is twice the memory capacity of the top Googlebook.
“We can evolve much faster than macOS and Windows,” McMaster says. “When you’re a billion-user incumbent, it’s impossible to tip the boat, man. It’s just really hard to make big changes. Over time, there’s this event horizon where building a new kind of OS for intelligence can become something very compelling.”