Within the present wave of AI innovation, one time period has turn into particularly modern: infrastructure. Founders use it as a shorthand for defensibility, scale, and class management. Traders usually hear it and lean in reflexively, hoping to identify the following Snowflake, Hugging Face, or Databricks.
However currently, there’s a widening hole between what founders name infrastructure and what infrastructure truly is.
Not less than half the AI startups pitching themselves as “infrastructure” are, in apply, feature-rich purposes or integration instruments. These are helpful, possibly even essential, however not foundational layers of the ecosystem. This submit goals to make clear that distinction and clarify why it issues: each for founders attempting to construct enduring corporations and buyers in search of lasting returns.
Infrastructure isn’t just a enterprise mannequin or technical abstraction. It’s outlined by its place within the stack, the character of its dependencies, and the price of switching away from it.
In sensible phrases, infrastructure:
- Sits within the essential path of a buyer’s manufacturing workflow
- Has excessive switching prices on account of deep technical…
