We need small players to help shape the future of AI Posted on : Sep 18 - 2017

Google, Alibaba, Facebook, Baidu, and other tech giants are leading the charge in developing and acquiring AI companies and talent. Many observers have expressed concern that the big players are dominating what will be one of the most important fields in technology. Unlike past waves of technological development, the AI boom could shut out startups and entrepreneurs. I’ve written about the potential for AI to create a stratified society, but I am optimistic about the ability of smart, savvy visionaries to build leading AI technologies without backing from major tech companies.

AI startup ecosystem

AI is a buzzword right now. If you take a 10,000-foot view of the startup world, you will see a lot of “AI” companies. Many of these are truly building or using AI tools across one or multiple verticals. Other, more traditional companies are just trying to jump on the AI bandwagon. There are currently 3,119 companies listed under AI on AngelList. This is just one data point that shows how prevalent AI is in the innovation ecosystem. But this stat only scratches the surface. Let’s dig into what it takes to build an AI startup. We’ll then explore whether it is possible to grow into an independent, next-generation tech giant, or if being acquired by deep-pocketed tech incumbents is the only play.

Having or building the right tools

The first step in building an AI startup is creating an AI. A company can build its own AI from the ground up or utilize open source tools that it builds on top of. This process is similar to past generations of tech development. However, the path taken has a strong impact on a startup’s potential value and the likelihood it will remain independent over time. For companies that opt to build their own AI from the ground up, the process can be painstaking and slow. One of the biggest challenges is getting enough smart AI programmers to build it.

Companies like Google, Baidu, and Tesla have snatched up many of the best minds in AI. So what is a startup to do? Many emerging groups are founded the old-fashioned way. They’re built with smart, savvy tech leaders who aim to create their own enterprise. Iris AI is doing this for scientific research, Dataminr is doing this for news, Deep Genomics is focused on genetic impacts at the cellular level, and a host of other companies are creating interesting homegrown AI-related tech. View More