Takeaways from RingCentral’s Panel Discussion on Building Products in a GenAI World

Recently, I moderated a RingCentral panel discussion on the topic of "Building Products in a GenAI World.” Our conversation centered around investment and growth opportunities in the Generative AI space in the near term. As RingCentral’s Chief of Innovation, EVP, and head of RingCentral Ventures, I remain excited to be part of this revolutionary time in tech both as an innovator and as an investor. AI permeates every aspect of RingCentral products right now, especially via our RingSense AI Platform and RingSense for Sales. I greatly enjoyed the conversation with our panelists, who shared their experience from the investment and development sides of the GenAI landscape and offered their valuable insights for entrepreneurs.

Kicking off the discussion, I shared data from Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech 2023, which shows how Generative AI is already at the peak of inflated expectations. Large Language Models (LLMs) are what power most Generative AI use cases today, so it was not surprising to learn in the panel discussion that the vast majority of investments have gone into this foundational infrastructure to the tune of over $11B, followed by horizontal applications (around $4B) and emerging industry-specific generative apps. 

A question that all enterprises grapple with is to decide whether to buy into existing AI tools or to build them natively.  All panelists agreed that some enterprises have the in-house tech knowledge base for building some very specific AI solutions while very few enterprises have the expertise in-house to handle the operations side of the house as well. This yields opportunities for such companies to partner with AI companies able to introduce solutions with high technical risk but low market risk, which is where the investment opportunity lies.

From an investment perspective, the panel sees opportunity in backing tech founders who are solving the hardest problems, as those will have larger moats and be more difficult to replicate. The panel agreed that lots of capital has been deployed in the model and infrastructure layers of the AI landscape already and that what lies ahead are infinite possibilities at the application layer which is just starting to be explored. 

When asked where the GenAI landscape is heading and shifting, the application layer generated a lot of talk and excitement on the panel again, as everyone agrees that this is where GenAI tech stands to have the most positive impact on our world and on people’s lives. Examples cited included biology and material sciences, especially, with a sense that the intersection of computation and biology is ridiculously exciting when it stands to yield things like targeted therapeutic drugs for humans or even addressing climate change. AI offers massive possibilities for pattern-rich scientific discovery at faster and better rates than humans alone could ever attain.

As for advice for entrepreneurs, the panel suggested that start-ups focus on specific solutions that are durable, differentiated, and defensible and urged entrepreneurs not to try to compete with hyperscalers – although they noted that a laser-focused start-up might be able to out-compete a behemoth hyperscaler if the start-up has enough niche focus. We agreed that opportunities abound in everything from the silicon layer (new chips) to helping companies operationalize language models in practical applications to the least-explored but highest-potential application layer.

This was a thrilling panel to moderate, with all of its abundant excitement over a landscape rich in opportunities to create generationally-defining AI companies right now. We cannot wait to see what comes next in the AI world, and RingCentral Ventures will continue to sponsor panel discussions along these lines as this field evolves. 

To engage more with this fascinating subject, you can listen to the whole panel here.

Thank you again to the panelists who participated in this conversation, including:

Rob Toews, Partner, Radical Ventures

Meryem Arik, Co-founder & CEO TitanML

Deon Nicholas, Co-founder & CEO, Forethought.ai

Prashant Kukde, VP of AI Product Development, RingCentral

This article was originally published on LinkedIn on November 16, 2023.