VCs discuss why most consumer AI startups still lack staying power
Even three years after the generative AI boom started, most AI startups are still making money by selling to businesses, not individual consumers. Although consumers quickly adopted general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT, most specialized consumer GenAI applications have yet to resonate. “A lot of early AI applications around video, audio, and photo were super cool,” said Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, onstage at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in early December. “But then Sora and Nano Banana came out, and the Chinese open sourced their video models. And so, a lot of those opportunities disappeared.” Chien compares some of those applications to the simple flashlight, which was initially a popular third-party download after the iPhone…
