For some tech CEOs, they’re not just building AI — they’re already living with it.
Three founders of AI startups in San Francisco shared with Business Insider how they personally use AI in their work and lives, and what some of their favorite tools are for themselves and their team members.
From running diagnostics on complex cloud systems to drafting proposals on a time crunch, here is how AI is helping these CEOs keep up with their busy schedules.
Vipul Ved Prakash
Vipul Ved Prakash, the cofounder and CEO of Together AI, which enables developers to train generative AI models, told Business Insider that he uses AI “a ton for everything.”
“I would often design markups of products that we want to build, and I can do that very effectively with vibe coding now,” said Prakash. “It also helps me handle legal contract analysis — we often sign complex contracts with data centers, cloud, and customers.”
“Also, just being able to learn about a new topic very quickly, I end up spending a lot of time on AI, I would say, way more time than I do on search or productivity apps,” Prakash added.
Prakash said that, as a company, Together AI operates many data centers and tens of thousands of GPUs, so when an operational problem occurs, he finds that most of them are identified and diagnosed by AI rather than humans.
Arvind Jain
Arvind Jain, cofounder and CEO of Glean, an AI-powered enterprise search and workplace productivity platform, told Business Insider that he actually uses his own product most frequently.
“For me, my instinct has changed,” said Jain. “Any piece of work that I need to do, the first question I ask is that ask is: Can Glean do it? It became my coworker and my colleague.”
Jain said that when he wanted to research the product launch of a large cloud hyperscaler to explore potential partnerships, he used AI rather than the traditional route of asking the company’s CTO, who would then ask team members to write a proposal.
“I just ask AI to give me the first proposal, and I get it in one minute as opposed to in two weeks, and I didn’t take anybody else’s time to do it,” Jain added. “I read it, of course, to figure out whether it makes sense or not. But oftentimes, it’s very, very good.”
Daniel Yanisse
Daniel Yanisse, the cofounder and CEO of Checkr, which uses AI to conduct background checks, told Business Insider that he mainly uses AI from the perspective of an engineer.
“It’s incredible because I vibe code, and I’m an engineer. So until you do it, you don’t really know its power.”
Yanisse said that he understands that nontechnical people can get stuck and feel discouraged once the code hits a roadblock and the app breaks, which is why he has designated “AI solutions engineers” to help unstuck nontechnical staff who want to harness vibe coding.
Having tried many vibe coding tools, Yanisse said that Lovable is good for people who have never coded anything before, and one can upgrade to Replit once they’re a little more technically comfortable. Meanwhile, for engineers, his favorite is Cursor, and he is looking to add ClaudeCode on top of that for the company.
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