AI-native companies are growing fast and doing things differently

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. AI-native companies are born with a capacity to dynamically change and learn from customer data and workflows, potentially becoming as good as a custom app that a client might have commissioned. Most companies necessarily approach generative AI as an innovation to integrate, but a handful of startups have sprung up with artificial intelligence as their starting point.

Like the digital-native companies that disrupted their elders at the dawn of the internet era, these AI natives don’t need to reimagine their products, infrastructure or workflow, much less retrain or cut employees as a result of the new tech. They are testing boundaries in sectors from finance to software development and advertising and marketing. And in some cases they are overturning ideas about what’s possible, especially when it comes to growth.

It isn’t clear how many will succeed. But established companies should keep them on their radar, as a potential source of new competition, fresh ideas to be adopted and mistakes to be avoided. “Microsoft, or some other company that’s a going concern today, has a way of doing things, and they are like, ‘Can I do this more efficiently?’ " Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of Microsoft’s AI at Work group, told me.

“But we are starting to see the upswing, the creation, of AI native companies. These are companies who say ‘I don’t care how it was.’ " Spataro, who leads nearly 300 employees under the Modern Work and Business Applications umbrella, said that AI-native companies provide a glimpse into the future of work. All companies should learn from them as they move toward becoming what Spataro calls “AI first." AI native companies have a wide range of characteristics, but