Poolside CEO says most companies shouldn’t build foundation models | TechCrunch

Poolside co-founder and CEO Jason Warner didn’t mince words: He thinks that most companies looking to build foundation AI models should instead focus on building applications. Poolside is an AI-powered software development platform.

Warner told the audience at the HumanX AI conference in Las Vegas on Monday that he doesn’t think anyone who doesn’t think intelligence is the most important commodity in the world — on par with electricity — should be building a foundation model.

“If you’re one of those people, if you want to take one side of the fence, you’re a printing press for cash unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the world,” Warner said. “Or if the other side of the fence, you’re basically changing and bending the arc of humanity in a way that we’ve not done before. And I believe that to be true.”

Warner added that his company is “literally” going after AGI through software. If someone looks at foundational models as more of a “nice to have” as a way to raise VC cash, the company should just build a wrapper on an existing foundational model instead, he added.

With all that being said, however, Warner said he thinks that companies building foundation models can’t just have a foundation model as their product. Instead, that should be a part of their product — especially as the landscape gets more competitive.

“In my view, if I’m going to go build this type of business, I’m building on one side, going after intelligence on compute, I need to go after the hardest environment,” Warner said. “You can’t do simple on one side and hard on the other. It doesn’t really make sense, because if you’re going to go for everything, go for everything.”

He added that this is why Poolide is going after tough fields like defense and working with the government. But Warner said the company plans to launch a consumer application at some point, too.

San Francisco-based Poolside was founded in 2023 by Warner, the former CTO of GitHub and VC at managing director at Redpoint, and Eiso Kant, a serial founder. The company has raised more than $620 million in venture funding and is currently valued at $3 billion.