It's as if all of the AI devex/infra companies are cargo culting the story of how the people that made the most money in the gold rush were the people who sold the tools.
The thing is that the tools were well understood and battle tested.
And this isn't just a matter of AI: You see all kinds of companies trying to provide value adds on top of cloud: "We will annotate DNA for you as a service!" When all they do is dockerize the same tools their customers use, and serve as small shims for the least sophisticated customers. The moment said customer grows, they understand they can replace the vendor with less than a week of work.
The people making shovels make the money by having strong profit margins, becoming a default vendor, and having a moat. Good luck doing that in AI!
And my favorite counter example of selling tools is precisely docker: They built tech used everywhere... yet how much value they captured? It's tge same story all over dev tool space.
GenAI applications are so finnicky that it’s easier to build a company around tools-for-AI than a company fitting their archtypical user profile doing AI applications (that’s actually profitable. Most of their customers likely aren’t anywhere close). That’s inverted from the prior SAAS/cloud boom.
I too think there are too many shovel chasers but I think it’s also a consequence of what’s easier to ship.
The thing is that the tools were well understood and battle tested.