There is a great,devotional Sufi song which goes "Ali da pehla number", which translates to "Ali is at number one" meaning "Ali is the greatest". I think the song is in the Sindhi language.
Also in Mumbai slang, "Do number" means shady. As in, "do number ka dhanda" i.e. illegal business. "Do" rhyming with the English "go" means two.
Judging just by the number of people doing the CS231n course online http://cs231n.stanford.edu/, the number of would-be practitioners who have the skills is definitely increasing. CS231n is a graduate level class and is conceptually harder than a "flavour of the month" app. Add to that the number of articles being published on DIY experiments with AI, I think the 10K number seems small. Do these qualify as "serious" research? Maybe not, but they are not all trivial.
Nice idea! Good luck to you!
A few things you might want to correct on the website.
The investor_dashboard page leads to what looks like dummy data.
On the Investor FAQ, the "How safe is the Investor's Money?" question doesn't work.