The AI Opportunity Ahead

We are living through one of the rare moments in history when the rules are being rewritten in real time. Not iterated or incrementally improved, but fundamentally rethought. Artificial intelligence is not just another technology wave. It is a foundational shift that changes how products are built, how companies scale, and how value is created. The pace of change is extraordinary. What felt impossible eighteen months ago is now table stakes, and what feels like an advantage today may be obsolete within a year.

For founders and for us as investors, this creates a window that is both exhilarating and unforgiving. Over the next three to five years, many incumbent businesses are exposed. Not because they are poorly run, but because they were built for a different era. Their systems, cost structures, and ways of operating are not designed for a world where intelligence is abundant, cheap, and increasingly autonomous.

This is the opportunity. The companies that will define this era will not be those that simply layer AI into existing workflows. They will be those that are built AI native from day one, companies that assume intelligence is everywhere and design their products, operations, and economics around that assumption.

This is where we get excited as investors. We look for founders who are not asking how AI can improve a product, but how it can fundamentally reimagine an industry. Every week we are meeting founders doing this, winning tenders against incumbent SaaS businesses that we once thought were invincible.

Founders who start with first principles and ask what this business would look like if it were created today with the tools that now exist. In many cases, this leads to very different answers. Products become dramatically simpler for the user while becoming far more complex under the hood. Teams become smaller but more leveraged. Time to market compresses, distribution changes, margins shift, and entire categories that once required heavy infrastructure can now be built with speed and precision.

We are particularly drawn to companies where AI is not a feature but the core engine, where the product gets better with usage, where data compounds into a defensible advantage, and where the system improves itself over time. This often shows up in areas like healthcare, financial services, and education, where decision making has historically been slow, expensive, or fragmented, but the opportunity is not limited to verticals. A horizontal layer is also being built in parallel, new infrastructure, tooling, and platforms that enable others to move faster and build more effectively.

However, there is one shift that matters more than almost anything else in this new world. As the cost of building continues to fall and the tools become more widely accessible, the single biggest differentiator becomes distribution and brand. When anyone can build, not everyone can reach, engage, and earn trust.

This is where some founders underestimate the challenge. Technical advantage alone is no longer enough. In a world where products can be replicated quickly and capabilities converge, the companies that win are those that own attention, that build trust with their users, and that create a sense of identity and loyalty that goes beyond the product itself. Brand is no longer a layer added later. It is core to the product from day one. Distribution is not a function. It is the strategy.

We are already seeing this play out in real time. OpenAI recently acquired Technology Business Programming Network, a one year old media network that had quickly become one of Silicon Valley’s most influential daily shows. It was already profitable, growing fast, and attracting some of the most important voices in technology. OpenAI did not acquire it for its technology. They acquired it for its audience, its trust, and its position in the daily attention stream of builders and decision makers. In a world where intelligence is becoming commoditised, owning distribution becomes exponentially more valuable.

At the same time, companies like Lovable are showing a completely different approach to growth. Rather than relying on traditional paid acquisition or top down enterprise sales, they are building with community at the centre. Their users are not just customers, they are participants. They create, share, teach, and bring others in. Growth becomes a byproduct of engagement rather than a function of spend. Community is not a channel, it is the foundation.

For founders, this requires a different mindset. Distribution can no longer be an afterthought. It has to be designed into the product itself. How your product spreads, how users invite others, how value compounds through usage, these are no longer secondary considerations. They are core to whether your company succeeds.

For founders, the question is not whether to build with AI. That is already decided. The real question is how deeply you are willing to rethink what you are building. Are you using AI to enhance an existing workflow, or are you redesigning the workflow entirely. Are you building a product that requires people to adapt to it, or one that adapts to the user. Are you creating something that is incrementally better, or something that feels meaningfully different.

The bar is rising quickly. What felt magical last year now feels expected. This means that surface level applications will struggle to sustain advantage. The companies that endure will be those that go deeper, that own the problem, the data, and the feedback loops that drive continuous improvement. It also means that while speed matters, clarity matters more.

The founders who will win in this cycle are not just fast builders. They are clear thinkers. They understand the underlying shift and are intentional about how they position themselves within it. They know where they can create lasting value and where they are vulnerable. They are building not just for what AI can do today, but for where it is going.

Because this wave is not static. It is accelerating. And while the tools will continue to evolve, the most important decisions founders make today are about direction, about what they choose to build and why.

This is a moment where small teams can build what previously required large organisations, where new entrants can move faster than incumbents, and where competition is global from day one. Local champions are no longer competing locally. They are competing with the best in the world immediately.

That can feel daunting, but it is also what makes this moment so powerful. For those who get it right, the upside is extraordinary. We are at the beginning of a new generation of companies, ones that are more efficient, more intelligent, and more scalable than anything we have seen before.

We are excited to partner with the founders who embrace this shift fully, who build with conviction, and who are willing to rethink everything.