Some tech CEOs aren’t just building AI; they’re already living with it.
Three founders of San Francisco AI startups spoke to Business Insider about how they personally use AI in their work and lives, and what their favorite tools are for themselves and their team members.
From running diagnostics on complex cloud systems to writing time-sensitive proposals, see how AI helps CEOs manage their busy schedules.
Vipul Ved Prakash
Vipul Ved Prakash, co-founder and CEO of Together AI. This allows developers to train generative AI models. He told Business Insider that he uses AI “a ton for everything.”
“I often design markup for the products I want to build, and now I can do that very effectively using Vibe Coding,” says Prakash. “It also helps us do legal contract analysis. We often have complex contracts with our data centers, clouds, and customers.”
“Also, just because you can quickly learn about new topics, you end up spending more time on AI, probably much more than you would spend on search or productivity apps,” added Prakash.
Prakash said that as a company, Together AI operates many data centers and tens of thousands of GPUs, so they have noticed that when operational issues arise, most of them are identified and diagnosed by AI rather than humans.
Arvind Jain
Arvind Jain, co-founder and CEO of Glean, an AI-powered enterprise search and workplace productivity platform, told Business Insider that he actually uses his product the most.
“In my case, my instincts changed,” Jayne said. “When I have a job to do, the first thing I ask is, ‘Can Glean do it?’ Glean was my colleague and has become my colleague.”
Jain said that when he wanted to research a product launch for a large cloud hyperscaler and explore potential partnerships, he turned to the company’s CTO and used AI instead of the traditional route of asking team members to write proposals.
“I just ask the AI for an initial proposal. Instead of two weeks, I get it in a minute, without taking anyone else’s time,” Jain added. “Of course, I read it to see if it made sense or not. But more often than not, it’s very, very good.”
Daniel Giannis
Daniel Janisse, co-founder and CEO of Checkr, which uses AI to conduct background checks, told Business Insider that he primarily uses AI from an engineering perspective.
“This is incredible because I work with code and I’m an engineer, so you don’t really understand the power of it until you try it.”
Janisse said he understands that non-technical people can get stuck or discouraged when the code hits a roadblock and the app breaks, so he said he has appointed an “AI solutions engineer” to help unstuck non-technical staff who want to take advantage of Vibecoding.
Yanisse, who has tried many Vibe coding tools, said Lovable is suitable for people who have never coded anything before and can upgrade to Replit once they are a little more technically savvy. Meanwhile, the engineer’s favorite is Cursor, and the company is considering adding ClaudeCode to it.