The easiest way to underestimate a technological shift is to judge it by the work it is already doing.
So far, the most visible applications of generative AI have been familiar ones: drafting emails, summarizing meetings, writing code, preparing presentations, and automating repetitive workflows.
These have been useful, and in some cases, transformative.
But they are still mostly examples of using a new technology to make historical processes faster.
With technology inflections, the larger opportunity always comes later.
With every major platform shift, the most consequential businesses often emerge when entrepreneurs stop asking, “How can this improve what already exists?” and start asking, “What is now possible that wasn’t practical before?”
We have seen this movie before.
The automobile initially solved a familiar problem: moving people and goods. But widespread car ownership ultimately reshaped where people lived, worked, and shopped. It did not simply improve transportation. It changed the geography of everyday life.
The smartphone followed the same pattern. The first iPhone combined familiar products: a phone, a music player, email, maps, and internet access. Then entrepreneurs realized that a connected computer in everyone’s pocket could become infrastructure for entirely new services.
Uber was not simply a better phone application. It was a new way to coordinate transportation.
We believe AI will follow a similar path.
The first phase has been about assistance and automation. The next phase will be about rethinking products, workflows, services, and in some cases entire industries.
That is where we believe some of the most compelling investment opportunities will emerge.
The Investment Thesis
We are particularly interested in entrepreneurs who combine deep domain expertise with the willingness to challenge the assumptions of the industry they know so well.
They understand which rules matter, and which rules only exist because nobody had a better alternative.
At Automotive Ventures, we believe AI will create enormous opportunities across automotive, mobility, transportation, commerce, and the broader industrial economy.
But we are not attempting to predict every new company that AI will enable.
Our job is to identify exceptional entrepreneurs who see something others do not.
Founders whose experience gives them differentiated insight, and an unfair advantage.
Founders who understand how an important technology inflection changes the economics of an industry.
And founders with the ambition and execution ability to build the company that should exist on the other side of that change.
The first generation of AI companies is helping us do what we already do.
The companies that ultimately matter most will help us do things we have never been able to do before.
Those are the companies we are looking for. And those are the entrepreneurs we are looking to back.
