Building the “AI Stack” 🏗️

Hi friends,

Flybridge no longer sees AI as one investment area, but as our central focus. We firmly believe entrepreneurs will shape an AI-driven future across every industry.

In the third installment of this five-part series, I will break down the third tenet of Flybridge’s Third Wave Thesis. Follow along, share your perspectives, and let me know what founders you’ve found building an AI-powered future.

Part Three: AI Platforms and Data Infrastructure

The AI transformation in enterprise software requires modern data infrastructure tailored for machine learning. Just as past transitions like cloud computing sparked new platforms and tools. AI-powered startups building data products to streamline ML development, deployment, management, and scaling can capture significant market share.

Several factors drive this demand - a rise in complex data, a need for speed, required throughput, etc. But the main benefit is enabling developers to reliably build AI systems. Abstractions handling data flows, feature engineering, model creation, deployment, and grunt work so teams can focus on high-impact jobs.

An ecosystem of startups is emerging to produce a new “AI stack”, alongside open-source projects and platforms from incumbents. Tools like AppWrite help you build secure and scalable apps, faster. Metaplane helps data teams know when things break, identify what went wrong, and figure out how to fix it. Arcee helps enterprises train custom SLMs that improve trust and security.

Industry analysts forecast this ecosystem exceeding $200 billion in revenue by 2035 as AI adoption follows the rapid growth of cloud-native firms since 2010. Specialized data infrastructure for AI enables new capabilities (faster) capturing significant enterprise budgets.

Startups simplifying AI/ML complexity to strengthen developers are positioned to ride this wave. Whether streamlining data pipelines, tracking models, or making AI more accessible to builders, founders embracing this paradigm shift will experience significant growth.

Until next time,

Jesse

Hot Links

🏠 SXSW is next week. I’m co-hosting NYC Night at Lumos House with Andrew Yeung. Live music, dinner, and drinks at a mansion in Austin. RSVP here.

🤖 Acree has raised $5.5M and is hiring across a variety of roles. The team is building small, specialized, secure, and scalable language models.

💼 Splice is hiring a Sr. Data Scientist. If you know someone who might be a good fit, message me or apply here.

🔥 Join me at Betaworks on March 7th for Primetime VC, “The Show of Accredited Banter,” with Zehra Naqvi (Headline), Olivia O'Sullivan (Forum), and Victoria Kennedy (Harvest).

👋 Hi, I’m Jesse, a seed-stage VC at Flybridge. If you’re building or investing in an AI-driven future, reply to this email with 1-2 short paragraphs. I’d love to catch up over coffee.