The Vertical AI Playbook & 200 Vertical AI Startups Across Sectors

200 Vertical AI Startups + The Framework Behind the Winners

Hey everybody, welcome back to The AI Opportunity 👋

Over the last 12 months we’ve seen a clear pattern: some of the biggest outcomes in AI are coming from vertical AI that lives inside specific workflows.

The so called AI wrappers that have endured have built not only on top of LLMs but also own the workflow, get network effects and build data moats.

Sam Altman clearly says how he feels AI startup should be building to avoid being killed by OpenAI

In this newsletter I break down:

• The Vertical AI Playbook: how to build a defensible AI startup

• 200 Vertical AI Startups across sectors list

  

Let’s get to it 🔥

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Think Harvey and Legora in legal, Abridge in clinical documentation, OpenEvidence in medical search.

All quietly crossed billion-dollar valuations not by being smarter models, but by going deeper into a niche than any horizontal tool ever could.

Let’s break down what is actually working, what is getting killed, and why VCs are suddenly obsessed with vertical AI.

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The Vertical AI Playbook