The State of the Cloud

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Bessemer put out State of the Cloud 2024. My favorite quote was:

• Reality 3: AI models become as diverse and popular as the potato chip market.

  Just like there are endless flavors of potato chips, the future of the AI model economy could very well look something similar to the snack aisle at your local grocery store.

I think this is definitely where we are headed with AI models. Differentiated use cases and geographies will play a part in this. If you think about how many different brands and flavors we have of potato chips, the ideas and options are endless. One day you could be having nacho cheese Doritos, the next day you are trying sour cream and onion pringles. Or maybe you like to try something from eastern Asia like Lays Spicy Hot Pot

I think the one other thing that stood out to me, that I have been thinking about a lot is that AI is going to turn all of us into 10X developers. Not only will everyone be able to be 10X developers, but that will lead to companies needing less headcount to achieve the scale that previously took massive teams. We hear a lot about companies that will be born with only 1 employee and become a unicorn. That will be rare, but I do believe we will see teams of less than a dozen reaching that billion or multibillion-dollar scale. AI without a doubt will be part of these stories. I also think we will see a new wave of graduates who will be experts in AI tooling and the new software powered by AI. This will make these younger employees more efficient and capable of leapfrogging their older competition.

The one other area that caught my eye was- Multimodal models and AI agents will transform human relationships with software. Specifically, “In the next 12 months, we expect voice AI applications in particular to see breakout growth. Over the longer term we also see the promise of agent-first products changing the way businesses operate, as they set new expectations in terms of the complexity and breadth of tasks that AI can be entrusted to handle.” At Social Leverage, we have an investment in Ribbon.ai which has their Recruit AI product. This product is leaning in on voice and making it easy to screen candidates 24/7 using their natural-sounding AI that delivers instant interview insights. Their product is getting a lot of buzz from employers that are hiring and I think this is the first of many voice-driven applications of AI that we will see become successful.

The state of cloud and the state of AI is moving quickly, and what happens over the next 6m of 2024 I am sure will give us lots of new innovation.