Not Just Another ‘AI Company’: Charting the Path to Next-Gen Unicorns

I remember a time when proprietary database systems commanded hefty licensing fees, complete with extra charges for premium features or scaling up. Along, In the early 2000’s, came open source, introducing MySQL as a game-changer that significantly influenced web application development. Back then, every startup ran on databases, but we didn’t dub them “database startups.” There was no google.db or amazon.db despite databases being crucial to their growth.

Similarly, technologies like cloud services quickly became the invisible backbone supporting today’s tech unicorns. Yet, we don’t label Uber or Spotify as “cloud companies,” do we?

Today, we’re witnessing an explosion of startups with the .ai domain (new and rebranded), each racing to capitalize on the AI wave. This is the modern-day gold rush for founders and VC’s alike. It reminds me of the early App Store’s flashlight apps — a trend, soon to be absorbed into the greater business tech stack. These are different from the work of trailblazers like OpenAI and Anthropic, among many other important ones, who are crafting the very framework of the AI-driven future.

The recent launch of Microsoft’s Windows Copilot sends a straightforward signal: time is running out for startups that focus solely on building specialized AI features. AI is not merely an add-on, but rather a cornerstone that is reshaping businesses, much like the Internet, databases, and cloud services did. However, its transformative power is expected to be significantly greater.

So, the real question is not about being an “AI company.” It is about who will become the next Airbnb or Uber in a world where foundational AI technologies like GPT-4 are still closed, proprietary, and yet indispensable, just as Oracle and SQLServer were in the past.