Chi-Hua Chien saw Facebook coming — now he says the real AI winners won’t be selling AI

Chi-Hua Chien has spent more than two decades as a venture capitalist, but he thinks like a cultural anthropologist. As a co-founder of Goodwater Capital, a firm focused exclusively on consumer and prosumer technology, he has built a portfolio spanning entertainment, healthcare, fintech, and live experiences — with investments in companies like MIDI Health, Fever, and Monzo. He was also, as a 27-year-old associate at Accel, the person who initially found a six-person company launched from Harvard called The Facebook.

That ability to read human behavior at scale informs everything from his view that Americans will never trust a single app with both their social lives and their finances, to his belief that the gap between the most advanced AI model and what you can run on your phone — once as wide as two years — will shrink to three months within the next year.

These days, he is also willing to say out loud what many in venture capital are only thinking: that the commoditization of the model layer is already underway and that the biggest winners of the AI era won’t be the companies selling AI at all.

We talked last week. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

More founders and investors have been publicly sharing their grievances about VCs lately. What’s changed?

It’s part of the meme-ification of everything — you’re seeing what’s happening in the political realm bleeding over into the business side, and it’s probably also the sign of some peakiness in the market. The reason you’re seeing some of these outspoken investors talking more publicly is because venture firms have largely vertically integrated, so the really big ones have enough capital that they’re not necessarily looking for syndicate partners. There used to be decorum around wanting to preserve good relationships with other co-investors, because you got to work with them at different points along the line. As the firms have gotten bigger and vertically integrated, there’s less of that need.

What about the “fast follow” rounds — where firms invest a large chunk at one valuation and a smaller amount weeks later at a much higher one, making the headline number look more impressive than it really is? Is this really new? How pervasive is it?

I think it’s been going on for quite some time. The best companies raise successive rounds very quickly — there might only be three to six months between rounds now, and valuations change really quickly … Valuations are being marketed very aggressively as a way of demonstrating market leadership, attracting talent, potentially blocking out competition. There’s probably some element of frothiness, because what these fast financings are most illustrative of is there’s way more demand than there is supply. An investor can come in, set a price, complete a financing, and then a couple of weeks later there’s still excess demand — and the company can immediately price a new round at a higher price.