Positioning for AI
Over the past six months, I’ve noticed an interesting distinction emerge in conversations: pure AI-native companies, brands powered by AI, and those adjacent to AI. But what’s the real difference, and does it matter?
An AI-native brand places artificial intelligence at the core of its identity. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Hugging Face exist to advance AI systems and the movement around them. Brands like Writer, Glean, and Cohere focus on building AI agents and platforms, while Scale AI and Snorkel AI serve ML/AI teams with critical data and infrastructure. For these companies, purpose, promise, and market perception revolve entirely around AI.
AI-powered companies leverage AI to enhance or expand existing offerings. ServiceNow integrates AI into its workflow platform, IBM delivers enterprise AI applications, and Microsoft embeds AI into productivity tools. These companies aren’t AI-native, but they strategically use AI to strengthen their core propositions.
AI-adjacent brands provide tools, data, and services essential to ML/AI workflows but aren’t defined by AI itself. DataBricks, Snowflake, and Google Cloud exemplify this: indispensable to the ecosystem, yet their core identity extends beyond AI even if their business models benefit from it.
So why does this matter? It shapes investor expectations, talent attraction, and consumer perceptions. The distinction becomes especially relevant during technological waves — SaaS, Big Data, IoT, AI, Digital Transformation, and now GenAI — which reshape markets, valuations, and strategies.
When AI capabilities plateau or pivot, AI-native brands may need to rethink their identity. IBM Watson illustrates the risk: marketed as a revolutionary AI to transform healthcare and customer service, it overpromised and underdelivered. Skepticism grew among investors, customers, and talent, and credibility suffered. It showed that an AI-native identity can backfire if execution lags behind narrative.
In contrast, OpenAI shows how a well-aligned AI-native identity drives growth. By consistently linking product innovation, research breakthroughs, and ethical discourse with its brand story, OpenAI has built investor confidence, attracted top researchers, and engaged a broad user base. Authentic integration of AI into the brand has fueled rapid adoption and market leadership.
The lesson is clear: organizations must understand where they fall on the AI spectrum and communicate it strategically. Align AI initiatives with core positioning, and resist chasing hype that could undermine hard-earned brand equity.
In the long run, AI-powered and AI-adjacent companies may prove more resilient. Their identities aren’t bound to a single technology, allowing them to adapt, integrate, and innovate without existential reinvention. In a world of shifting paradigms, brands grounded in core truths and purpose are the ones that endure.