Race For AI Pie Hots Up As Top Executives Jump On The Startups Bandwagon

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the buzzword in the technology industry. From product giants and IT services companies to tech startups, everyone seems to be in a rush to leverage AI in whichever beneficial way they can. No wonder, it has now reached a feverish pitch among tech entrepreneurs. Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s vice-president of research for post-training, is leaving the company. “I’ve gotten really excited about AI for science. My undergrad was in physics and I’m keen to apply this technology there. AI for science is one of the most strategically important areas for OpenAI. In order to achieve ASI, they are planning to invest in my new company,” he wrote on a social media post. OpenAI- the maker of ChatGPY- has seen several high profile exits in the last two years. Interestingly, many of them have set up their own AI startups. For instance, OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati left the company in late 2024 and founded Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup focused on making AI systems more accessible and customizable.

Former chief scientist at OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever launched Safe Superintelligence, which develops advanced AI outside of market pressures. Aravind Srinivas, a former research scientist at OpenAI, founded Perplexity in 2022. There are many other top executives of different tech firms, who have left their high-paying jobs to establish AI startups. This phenomenon is also playing out in India. Many top executives of IT firms and established tech startups have quit their jobs to set up AI startups. Former chief product officer of BharatPe, Jain has setup Jivi AI, AI startup operating in the healthcare sector. Rajiv Srivastava, Rajesh Janey and Rajnish Gupta- three former executives of HP, Dell-EMC, and Zebra Technologies co-founded CoreOps.AI, an AI/ML firm based in Noida. Similarly, Sharad Sanghi, founder of NetMagic and former MD of NTT India, has started AI cloud venture Neysa. There are many others, who have left their jobs to pursue AI-focussed ventures.

This indicates that the AI fever is real and it is catching up across the globe. Notably, industry experts opine that AI is a game-changer technology and any startup with right solutions can scale up real fast, challenging dominance of established players. This is apparently one of the reasons for many startups to come up with innovative solutions, disrupting existing business models. However, there is a catch. In every technology, although the initial phase has seen the entry of many players, many are unable to withstand and succeed in the market place. As the technology matures, only a handful of players are able to scale up and emerge as dominant players and consolidate their position. One has to wait and see about how many players are able to make it big in the AI field. No doubt, many startups will help push innovations in myriad ways and that definitely is a good augury for the society.