The opinions expressed by entrepreneurial contributors are their own.
The big winners of the early internet age were social media and search platforms. The biggest winners in the era of mobile technology have been app developers. The biggest winners of the cloud computing era have been streaming platforms.
The age of AI may be different.
This time, it is not the creators of the underlying technologies or the people who build products and solutions on top of them, but the end users (who use these solutions to streamline processes, create new value for their customers, and who grow exponentially). That will be the biggest beneficiary of AI.
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These days, it feels like almost everyone working in tech has become an AI investor or entrepreneur, but every non-AI company is desperately trying to find a way to become AI. Countless stakeholders are vying for the AI pie, and investors look at the field like a roulette table to decide where to bet.
Andreessen Horowitz has published a report with an insightful breakdown of the various players in this emerging space. “Who owns the Generative AI Platform?“ In it, they argue that market value often doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding the development of new technologies — think blockchain and the “Internet of Things” — but in recent memory Among them, it suggests that AI will be the first to create significant market value. Relatively short order. Like all other investors and entrepreneurs in the AI age, they are thinking critically about how to position themselves to take advantage of this new field.
Others are betting on cloud computing providers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, whose servers will soon host thousands of new AI apps and platforms. Others are betting on platforms with APIs (called “middleware”) such as OpenAI, Stability AI, and others. Others are still focused on AI-optimized consumer and enterprise products, such as new AI-powered productivity apps. Marketing solutions, financial services, enterprise solutions and more.
The use of AI solutions to create and capture value is broad and rapid. Many of these new AI-based innovations will fail, but some will succeed, and if history is any guide, some will undoubtedly emerge as new industry giants. AI-era Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are out there, waiting to be established, and will create billions of dollars in value.
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However, the value delivered by these new tools pales in comparison to what users can realize. This is what makes the AI revolution different from the revolutions that came before it. The solutions enabled by generative AI are likely worth billions of dollars. The value generated for the user can be much more valuable.
Generative AI is rapidly becoming a commodity, putting powerful tools in the hands of everyday users. Today, a builder can spend years building his AI app, but now the technology exists for other entrepreneurs to use their own AI solutions, analyze them, and replicate them in hours. exists. When Google first gained dominance in the search market, it would not have lasted long if everyone had the tools to analyze its algorithms.
Instead, builders of AI solutions should create more creative competitive barriers, such as network effects and unique or large amounts of data, to prevent others from duplicating their innovations. In other words, in the age of AI, the democratization and widespread availability of technology makes it much harder to gain competitive advantage at every layer of the value chain.
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While those who build AI infrastructure, platforms, middleware, or tools will almost certainly change the world and bring immeasurable value to society, these entrepreneurs and companies are more likely to see what AI will create in the long term. You won’t get the largest share of value. Instead, we believe it will be in the hands of the end user, the enterprise whose productivity and capabilities can be dramatically increased thanks to these new tools.
Consider an enterprise company that has discovered that 90% of administrative tasks can be replaced with AI solutions. Significantly reduce administrative costs and significantly improve productivity, resulting in a tenfold increase in gross margins. Then do the same with marketing strategies, logistics and inventory networks, legal departments, financial services, and more. Every corner of the business is rapidly becoming more efficient and cost-effective.
That is why this revolution is different from the revolutions that came before it. There will undoubtedly be many more successful AI companies from him in the years to come, but I believe the biggest winners of this latest technological revolution will be those that make the most of it. .
Today’s focus on AI tools and tool builders seems to have survived the industrial revolution and is focused not on what people were building on those machines, but on the new machines and production processes people were creating. Thing.
Newsletters, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn accounts, and journalists cover the many new AI tools people are creating, but the most interesting and valuable part of this AI age is how people use these tools. I think it depends on what you use and what you’re using. for — where it can find and capture true value.
