The most common mistake I see founders make with AI right now is treating it as a technology competition. It isn't. The underlying models are commoditising faster than anyone predicted. The moat is elsewhere.
What I'm watching closely as an investor: who owns the distribution, the data, and the workflow. The companies that will win aren't necessarily the ones with the best model. They're the ones embedded deeply enough in a customer's daily operations that switching becomes genuinely painful.
This is a pattern I saw play out at Uber. The technology was never the durable advantage — it was the network, the trust, and the habit. By the time competitors had comparable technology, Uber had years of behavioural data and market presence that couldn't be replicated quickly.
For AI companies building today: the question isn't "how good is your model?" It's "how deep is your integration?" Workflow depth creates switching costs. Switching costs create defensibility. That's where I'm looking.
The founders I'm backing in AI right now are the ones who can answer this question clearly: why will your customer still be using this in five years, even if a better model exists? If the answer is the model itself, that's not enough.