A DEEP DIVE ON AI INFERENCE STARTUPS

Summary from the TLDR AI newsletter

One popular area of VC investing is building the “picks and shovels” for AI (e.g. model fine-tuning, observability, and inference). VCs are betting that companies will not want to build things in-house as they add AI to their products. The TAM for AI inference is quite constrained. VCs need to believe in massive TAM expansion for their investments to pay off. While AI inference platforms are a boon for startups in the short term, they are detrimental to startups over longer periods.