AI founders and researchers are reflecting on what business practices are sustainable, as investment flows into the industry.
Three AI leaders recently told Business Insider that balancing profits with cost-cutting will determine which companies survive, and where their own firms might land if an AI bubble bursts.
Major investors, including Mark Cuban and Bill Gurley, have been predicting over the past year that AI companies and some of the largest foundational models will run out of cash sooner than people may expect.
From boosting cost efficiency to diversifying revenue across robust industries, here is what leaders in AI think it would take for a company to remain viable if the AI bubble bursts.
Daniel Yanisse
Daniel Yanisse, the cofounder and CEO of Checkr, which uses AI to conduct background checks, told Business Insider that he believes there is an AI bubble and that some companies will not survive the burst.
“I think it’s definitely a bubble for AI-only focused companies. Some of them are going to die, and some of them are not going to be able to live up to those valuations and expectations,” said Yanisse. “The valuations are crazy for companies that have no revenue, no profit, so we’re watching that.”
Yanisse added that he is not worried about Checkr in a bubble burst scenario because the company is “a very scaled business.”
“Most of our revenues are not from AI companies,” said Yanisse. “They’re from real-world companies across all kinds of industries, from healthcare to small businesses, to automotive, manufacturing, retail — those are big businesses.”
Arvind Jain
Arvind Jain, cofounder and CEO of Glean, an AI-powered enterprise search and workplace productivity platform, told Business Insider that whether there is an AI bubble or not, the technology will be here to stay.
“I think bubble or not, the AI technology is powerful, and it is going to be here, and it’s going to change how we work, how everybody works, how everybody spends their day,” said Jain. “The new world is fundamentally different from the current world.”
As for Glean, Jain said he never thought of it as an AI company, but more as a platform that solves specific business problems.
“Now, if the bubble bursts, it kind of doesn’t matter to us,” Jain said.
“We are built more as a strong enterprise business,” Jain added. “We do not spend billions and billions of dollars trying to train models, and I think we have a strong balance sheet and a really awesome customer base, which makes us feel like our chances are good.”
Dan Fu
Dan Fu, Together AI’s vice president of kernels, who is in charge of an essential part of the machine learning process, told Business Insider that cost efficiency will be a key deciding factor in whether a company is viable when it comes to the AI bubble.
“AI companies actually have a lot of revenue. So the question is not so much whether this is some new technology of unknown value,” said Fu. “If you look at OpenAI or Anthropic’s sheet, they’re taking in a lot of revenue, but they’re also spending a lot on the compute.”
“So I think in one sense, the question of the day is: Can you deliver what people want and would use in their work and life in a way that will actually be cost-effective?” Fu added. “If some of these companies can just flip the cost model from something expensive to run to less expensive, and they just flip those unit economics a little bit — that’s a trillion-dollar company there.”
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