What three AI leaders think about the AI ​​bubble

AI founders and researchers are considering what business practices are sustainable as investment flows into the industry.

Three AI leaders recently told Business Insider that balancing profits and cost savings will determine which companies survive and where their companies land if the AI ​​bubble bursts.

Over the past year, major investors including Mark Cuban and Bill Gurley have predicted that AI companies and some of the largest underlying models will run out of money sooner than people expected.

From improving cost efficiencies to diversifying revenue across a robust industry, here’s what AI industry leaders think their companies will need to survive when the AI ​​bubble bursts.

Daniel Giannis

Daniel GiannisThe co-founder and CEO of Checkr, a company that uses AI to perform background checks, told Business Insider that he believes there is an AI bubble and that some companies won’t survive its collapse.

“I think this is definitely a bubble for companies that are focused solely on AI. Some of them are going to disappear, some of them are not going to live up to those valuations and expectations,” Janisse said. “Valuations for companies with no revenue or profits are insane, so we’re keeping an eye on that.”

Janisse added that Checker is not worried about a bubble bursting scenario because it is a “very large business.”

“Most of our revenue doesn’t come from AI companies,” Janisse said. “They’re from real-world companies in every industry, from healthcare to small business to automotive to manufacturing to retail, and they’re big companies.”

Arvind Jain

Arvind Jain, co-founder and CEO of Glean, an AI-powered enterprise search service. workplace productivity Whether there’s an AI bubble or not, the technology is here to stay, he told Business Insider.

“I think AI technology is powerful, bubble or not, and it’s definitely going to come and change the way we work, how everyone works, and how everyone spends their day,” Jain said. “The new world will be fundamentally different from the current world.”

Regarding Glean, Jain said he never thought of Glean as an AI company, but as a platform to solve specific business problems.

“If the bubble bursts now, it doesn’t matter to us,” Jain said.

“We are further growing as a strong enterprise business,” Jain added. “We don’t spend billions of dollars training models. We think we have a strong balance sheet and a very nice customer base. So we feel there’s a good opportunity.”

Dan Fu

Dan Fu, vice president of kernel at Together AI, who is responsible for a critical part of the machine learning process, told Business Insider that cost efficiency will be a key determining factor in whether a company can survive during an AI bubble.

“AI companies are actually making a lot of money, so the question is not whether this is a new technology of unknown value,” Fu said. “If you look at OpenAI or Anthropic’s sheets, you’ll see they’re making a lot of money, but they’re also spending a lot of money on compute.”

“So I think in some ways the challenge today is, can we actually provide people with the things that they want and want to use in their work and their lives in a cost-effective way?” Hu added. “If some of these companies can change their cost model from one that’s expensive to one that’s cheaper to operate, and if they can change their unit economics a little bit, then you have a trillion-dollar company.”