Two kinds of AI companies to build now: diffusion of AI vs the frontier of AI
adityaag · x · 2026-11-12
Investor adityaag frames today's AI startup landscape as two categories:
- Diffusion of AI: the new vertical SaaS — pushing AI close to where work happens (FDE companies, rollups, horizontal products). Examples: Profound, Cognition, Harvey.
- Frontier of AI: using AI to accelerate scientific progress, then building products from it. SPC examples: Externa (adding hundreds of chemical building blocks to proteins for disease-matched drugs), Epana Bio (genomics + AI autoimmune therapies), VenomicsAI (AI drug discovery from venoms), Equivariant (multi-physics modeling for semiconductors).
He argues most model-driven returns will come from category 2, with picks-and-shovels as a separate play.
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