Self-delusional marketingspeak. To me 'Vercel' sounds like a brand of cheap batteries.

And to me it sounds like a plasma-physics simulation package running on supercomputers.

\shrug\

Batteries is what came to my mind. Like Duracell.

Sounds boring and enterprisey to me.

I connected it to none of those words. Instead, I connected it to a) some kind of telephone company that is dodgy b) incels.

Vercel sounds like something about vermin and incels.

Lmao... this is what I heard when I read the word the first time too. "Incel..?"

That's just marketing speak. It doesn't actually explain why they changed their name.

I mean it’s a complete and total wild ass guess but the obvious reason to change one’s name is if you’ve identified another entity that is using that name in a way which could prevent you from global exclusive use of the brand.

It’s the kind of thing that could easily have come up in due diligence for the large recent investment.

Doing a quick search of TESS2 for trademarks look they already have the trademark registered for ZEIT (registered in 2017). So it was probably for other reasons. Which is a shame, because Zeit is very concise, easy to remember, and has a strong brand today - at least with their initial audience.

Sounds like they're trying to go for a more corporate customer with their new name.

It’s a big world out there.

Yeah but that's why they chose Vercel not why the name ZEIT had to be changed in the first place

That's not the "reason" though, that's the rationalization