Anyone who still thinks today without artificial intelligence (AI) may already build yesterday's business model. International players such as Duolingo, Shopify or Klarna are already relying on an “AI-First” strategy. At Duolingo, the AI independently designs language courses. Shopify does not hire new people if AI can also take over the job. Klarna built a AI assistant for its employees and even had the business results announced by a CEO's AI clone. That means: AI is not a technical add-on here, but the strategic core of companies-from the product to the team structure to corporate culture.
Sometimes, however, the drastic consequence has: The Viennese Ki-Scaleup Anyline, for example, recently announced that it would relieve up to 40 percent of the workforce-in the course of a realignment around AI. At Klarna, AI assistants have already taken on tasks that would otherwise have done over 800 full-time forces. And there are more and more. According to Bloomberg, Klarna boss Sebastian Siemiatkowski expects that the number of employees will decrease from 3000 to 2500 in one year. If the technology continues to develop, more positions could be affected.
It is also clear for many German startups: If you want to remain relevant in the long term, you cannot avoid AI. This is shown by a survey by the Digitalverband Bitkom: 39 percent of the tech startup surveyed is convinced that companies without AI strategy have no future-neither technologically nor in the labor market or in the race for capital.
But what does “Ai First” actually mean in practice? How does that change the work in a team – and how do you get an entire organization to really use AI? Tim Niekamp and Thiago Goldschmidt from Visiolab made it. They reveal how it went, what they learned and what the biggest challenges were here.
AI First affects more than just the product
Visiolab has developed a AI-based self-checkout system for gastronomy. The software automatically recognizes the products – without manual intervention. “Without this AI, our business model would not exist. It is the core of everything. Therefore: yes, we are an Ai-First Company,” says founder Niekamp. It was not the plan at first. “I did not sit down and said: I want to found an AI First company. In retrospect, it was actually the idea from the start,” he says.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/technologie/so-baut-ihr-ein-echtes-ai-first-startup/
