Will startups be at a disadvantage in the AI era because of the power of data? Find out why!

AI: The next technological revolution?

If you read any news about business, technology or startups today, you'll almost certainly find at least one mention of AI. And with good reason: technology is looking for its next growth driver.

Over the years, we've seen many interesting technologies vie for this spot. From blockchain-based technology, to augmented and virtual reality for consumer and professional applications, to creator-driven platforms, the list is long indeed.

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Promising but little adopted technologies

However, most of these technologies lost much of their appeal when it became clear that they would take much longer than expected to achieve widespread adoption. In some cases, the technology wasn't ready for everyday use, or it wasn't as suitable for enterprise or consumer use as everyone thought. In many cases, they were simply too complex to implement.

AI is the latest addition to this long line of aspirants. Indeed, it has all but earned its place: large linguistic models are incredibly interesting and can be used for many new and existing applications. This has invariably led public market investors to expect tech companies to unlock new growth opportunities through AI. Tech CEOs feel the same way, as do venture capitalists.

The industry is imbued with incredible optimism about the use of new AI technologies. Money is pouring in for companies of all shapes and sizes that want to build AI models, help customers train and use these models, protect LLM (large-scale language model) data or keep the information inside, or apply the technology directly to various use cases.

It's not yet clear how all these new AI-related features and tools will be monetized, but everyone seems to generally agree that this New Thing really does have potential, and that it's reasonable to be optimistic about AI's impact on our lives.

That's why I'm here. But I'm also worried about who's going to make all the money.

A world reserved for large companies

Backtracking to July, Reuters noted that of the $173.9 billion booked by PitchBook in the first half of 2023, venture capitalists had "invested more than $40 billion in AI startups". That's almost a quarter of all the money invested at that time - a simply immense share against a backdrop of declining venture capitalist activity worldwide.