REI Labs Reasoning Approach

Having been an REI member through my entire adulthood, after shopping there with my family as long as I can remember, it's bizarre to see the name reused for some AI project. I wonder why this organization chose such a jarring name for themselves, but I can't find any "about" page or the like which would explain the choice, or really anything else about them. Is this site meant to be cryptic?

I sighed at the pleasant but claude-looking design of the page.

idk what's wrong with me. it's a good looking page but I just instantly didn't care the second I saw the close-to-solarized-light color scheme and the typography.

It's similar to my reaction of sites with the maliciously compliant cookie popups or the auto-play video scroller things.