Bessemer Venture Partners, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture firms, has released its annual State of the Cloud report, highlighting the rise of Cloud AI and its impact on the technology industry. According to Kent Bennett, a partner at Bessemer and lead author of the report, Cloud AI has surpassed the legacy cloud and is being adopted at an unprecedented rate by both existing and new companies. The report emphasizes the importance of incorporating AI into cloud software products, warning that companies that fail to do so will be left behind by competitors who are leveraging this technology.
The report identifies five key trends that are shaping the future of the Cloud AI economy. The first trend is the battle over AI foundation models, which are seen as the new “oil” fueling downstream AI applications and tooling. Big Tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and Oracle are investing heavily in these models, with the report suggesting that a “battle-of-the-century” may be looming.
The second trend highlighted in the report is the evolution of the AI developer. Thanks to tools like GitHub Copilot and coding assistants from major tech companies, programming has become more accessible, allowing more people to become developers. The report predicts that by 2030, every individual with a computer and a phone will have significant developer capabilities, resulting in a younger average age for technology startup founders.
The third trend focuses on multimodal models and AI agents, which are changing how we work with software. The report suggests that static text-based chatbots are becoming outdated, and multimodal models that incorporate vision, hearing, and speech are becoming more prevalent. The report also predicts that intelligent and autonomous AI agents will handle tasks and manage workloads more efficiently in the future.
The fourth trend is the rise of vertical AI, which is expected to offer new business models and application ideas surpassing what was possible with legacy SaaS. Vertical AI is seen as an opportunity to significantly improve labor productivity, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes. The report suggests that vertical AI could be ten times more valuable than legacy SaaS in many industries.
The final trend identified in the report is the potential resurrection of the consumer cloud. While there hasn’t been a major exit in the consumer cloud space for the past eight years, Bessemer believes that AI will change this pattern. The report highlights the disruptive opportunities created by language model models (LLMs) in various categories of consumer cloud applications.
Overall, the report emphasizes that AI is no longer just hype but a reality that companies must embrace to stay competitive. While some of these trends may seem familiar, Bessemer Venture Partners believes that the current wave of AI adoption is different from past waves, as the reality is now outpacing the hype. Business leaders are advised to design their products and internal tools in modular ways, allowing for easy integration of new AI solutions in the future. Additionally, organizations are encouraged to stay informed about the latest developments in the AI space and explore partnerships with startups that offer convenient and suitable solutions.