Nation Thailand
Cheap AI is killing AI companies. That's the point.
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There is a simple way to start an AI company, and for a while it was a pretty good way. You rent access to a powerful model, put a cleaner interface on top of it, pick a job that people dislike doing, and charge more than the model costs you. This is not a stupid business. Many useful businesses begin as wrappers around someone else's infrastructure.
Key facts
- With an investment track record spanning since 2016, SCB 10X has deployed over USD 500 million globally into startups in AI, blockchain, and fintech
- An American startup had sold AI-written marketing copy, raised heavily, and reached a valuation of about 1.5 billion US dollars in late 2022
- Sacra had described the business model plainly in 2022: a reseller of someone else's AI
- A country buying AI in 2026 is not buying the 2023 version
- In March 2023, the most capable AI engines charged about 60 US dollars for a standard unit of work, roughly the text of seven novels processed
- By early 2026, public price lists tracked by Epoch AI showed the same quality of work selling for about one dollar
Summary
THE OPINION
There is a simple way to start an AI company, and for a while it was a pretty good way. You rent access to a powerful model, put a cleaner interface on top of it, pick a job that people dislike doing, and charge more than the model costs you. This is not a stupid business. Many useful businesses begin as wrappers around someone else's infrastructure.