So, if I understand you correctly, the business strategy for an AI wrapper company would be that they acquire customers quickly from a specific niche, build a name, while having very little custom technology and then get acquired by some of the larger players who do have the actual AI tech in-house. And, for them, it would be worth it for the brand/market/existing client base.
Assuming that the advance made in the meanwhile in AI doesn't eradicate the whole thing. I mean say some company builds a personal assistant for managers to supplant secretaries, they become the go-to name and then Google buys them in 2-3-5 years. Unless Google's AI becomes so good in the meantime that you can just instruct it in 1-2 sentences to do this for you.
> get acquired by some of the larger players who do have the actual AI tech in-house. And, for them, it would be worth it for the brand/market/existing client base.
The key is, if the incumbents truly feel they can't breach whatever moat, M&A is the safer bet over agonizing what if (I am thinking "git wrapper" startups that saw plenty competition from BigTech; remember Microsoft CodePlex, Google Code, AWS CodeCommit?). Given Meta's push and other prolific upstarts (OpenAI, Mistral), I don't believe access to SoTA AI itself (in the short term) will be an hindrance for product-based utility AI businesses (aka wrappers).
Assuming that the advance made in the meanwhile in AI doesn't eradicate the whole thing. I mean say some company builds a personal assistant for managers to supplant secretaries, they become the go-to name and then Google buys them in 2-3-5 years. Unless Google's AI becomes so good in the meantime that you can just instruct it in 1-2 sentences to do this for you.