10 vertical specialists shaping the HFS Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem

As we discover the emerging stars of the HFS Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem, it’s critical to focus on specific verticals or industries. Winning in the Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem is about solving specific business problems, not merely layering on more technology. The appeal of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to cost-conscious CXOs is very much tied to a reversal of several decades of gargantuan IT wastage.

The Generative Enterprise™ is HFS` articulation of the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies based on large language models (such as GPT-4), through which organizations will reap substantial business benefits by generating new ideas, redefining how work gets done, and disrupting business models mired in decades of outdated processes and technology.

The first report in this series introduced 10 firms to watch from across the application and infrastructure layers of the HFS Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem (Exhibit 1). This report takes a deeper dive into vertical industry specialists from agriculture and climate, creative, health, defense, and construction.

Get to know leading examples from your industry vertical

The following summaries are of emerging AI-led firms within their industry verticals. As more emerge, we will continue highlighting the firms that enterprise leaders need to know about. Naturally, this will mean the number of verticals represented in the HFS Generative Enterprise™ Ecosystem (Exhibit 1) will expand. In our previous report, for example, we referenced Harvey as a representative startup in the law firm sector.

Exhibit 1: The HFS Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem—knowing the Generative Enterprise™ applications in your vertical will prove an essential part of domain expertise

Source: HFS Research, 2024

Agriculture and climate: Protecting the rainforest—and the food we eat

Pachama

Pachama is playing its part in restoring nature by harnessing satellite data and AI to help enterprises make their investments in support of nature with greater clarity about the outcomes. Customers use Pachama’s tools to see the carbon impact of business activities and align enterprise reduction goals with strategies to support nature, such as reforestation. Pachama is building machine learning models integrating satellite data and 3D LiDAR imaging with plans to map forest carbon worldwide.

Pachama raised $9 million in an extension of Series B funding in December 2023, bringing the round to $64 million. Shopify is the firm’s most recent customer in a deal to reforest Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. The success of firms like Pachama depends on enterprises’ appetite for making sustainability more than a tick-box exercise to pass regulatory demands and meet shareholder expectations. Pachama needs customers that really want to make a difference.

FarmWise

FarmWise uses AI and computer vision in its state-of-the-art Vulcan machinery to remove weeds that would otherwise cut farm production and profitability, and it does away with those weeds without chemicals. Vulcan captures images, identifies which plants should and shouldn’t be there, and pulls out the weeds. FarmWise is a great example of applying AI to change how a business solves a problem. Rather than simply optimizing an existing process, such as spraying chemicals more efficiently, it has found a better way to remove the weeds, cutting chemical costs for farmers, making our food safer, and protecting wildlife—a triple win. (When you search the web for FarmWise, search for “FarmWise.io” for accurate results.)

Creative: New ways of telling stories and livening up internal communication

Runway

Runway offers multimodal models to support human creativity. It has made a long-term research bet on general world models. General world models are AI systems with an internal representation of an environment that can simulate future events. To pull this off, it captures the dynamics of the worlds and their inhabitants, complete with models of human behavior. For Runway, it’s all about designing models that allow people to tell stories in new ways. The firm threatens serious disruption to the content industry, targeting production for as close to zero cost as possible. Backers include Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce.

Descript

Descript is a full workflow tool for making videos and podcasts. It enables users to edit video by editing the transcribed text, allowing editing of video or audio as you would a text document. That feature makes it helpful in the workplace for livening up and speeding up reports for internal and external consumption. This is another creative-industry tool worth taking seriously since it is backed by the OpenAI startup fund and led by former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. It has already been valued at $550 million.

Health: Deploying digital twins of patients and raising life-saving early warnings

GenAI in healthcare is being deployed to address administrative tasks such as appeals, prior authorization, and call summarization. Pharma has a mixed bag of use cases for clinical research, commercialization, and regulatory affairs. However, as the Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem expands and matures, we will see changes in healthcare and pharma operations.

In the first of our reports on the Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem, we referenced PathAI as an emerging star in the health sector. It’s a vibrant sector despite the evident governance and privacy issues.

Bayesian Health

Bayesian Health could be a lifesaver—literally. While it purports to address the triple aim of care, comprising cost, experience, and health outcomes, its adoption and efficacy will depend upon regulations and the payer-provider dynamic, the health insurers’ position on AI-based diagnostics as the standard instead of the clinician-based diagnostics for reimbursements, for example. The firm’s adaptive AI platform guides caregivers to action clinical insights in response to what may otherwise be life-threatening events. The company’s data-driven platform employs machine learning to help doctors make rapid decisions. Time magazine included Bayesian Health’s targeted real-time early warning system in The Best Inventions of 2023.

Unlearn

Pharmas’ approach to developing medication is steeped in methods from Victorian times, such as using animal testing instead of AI-based simulations. Unlearn is attempting to disrupt the old ways by enabling clinical trials using digital twins. These aren’t the kind of digital twins you may be familiar with—the metaverse’s beloved version, replicating processes or buildings in three dimensions. Unlearn’s digital twins are of patients, and they forecast patients’ health. Unlearn’s teams use patient data to invent new types of generative models. The firm raised $50 million with a Series C round in February. Total investment is now $130 million.

Defense: Revolutionizing the battlefield with autonomous drones and robot combat vehicles

Shield AI

Shield AI is out to revolutionize the battlefield and shake up commercial aviation by building an AI pilot. Forget Microsoft Copilot for a moment; we’re talking about the kind of pilot that can fly a jet—or swarms of drones—autonomously. The firm developed Hivemind, a combat-tested autonomy stack, and a range of aircraft Hivemind can fly. It is acquiring drone-sensor specialist Sentient Vision Systems. The firm was valued at $2.7 billion in October 2023. Hivemind cuts out the usual drone requirements of remote operators, command inputs, and GPS. The AI it uses enables teams of drones to carry out missions independently and in coordination in high-threat environments.

Exhibit 2: Shield’s Hivemind autonomy stack can pilot a range of vehicles it builds; the V-BAT, pictured, could be deployed in formations of thousands

Source: Shield AI, 2023

Anduril

Anduril shares investors and founders with SpaceX. Anduril does have rocket science experience—it provides solid-fuel rocket motors, among other tech. Its core system is Lattice OS, an autonomous sensemaking platform for command and control of devices that fly, swim, survey, and protect. It recently signed a contract to supply robotic combat vehicles to the US Army. The founder claims Anduril is developing weapons that will have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb. That necessarily secret breakthrough is at the idea stage, but founder Palmer Luckey’s track record suggests we should pay attention. Luckey founded Oculus VR when he was 20 and sold it to Meta for $2 billion two years later.

Venture capitalists have sunk more than $100 billion in defense tech since 2021.

Construction: Advanced robotics are ready to shape more affordable housing and solve a labor crisis

Canvas

Canvas brings advanced robotics to the construction industry—specifically the drywall finishing process. The firm intends to reduce construction costs while improving the industry’s working conditions. You can see Canvas` machine in action here, completing drywall-finishing with a robotic arm. Canvas has a strategic partnership with Hilti, a long-established construction machinery group that launched a semi-autonomous ceiling drilling robot in 2020. With inputs from a human, the Canvas machine takes two days to complete what a human alone would need five days to do. In this respect, it can help solve labor shortages. And, since less physical effort is required, roles could be opened up to those who are less physically able.

Lowering the cost of drywall finishing and speeding up the process could decrease overall construction costs, potentially mitigating the US housing affordability crisis.

Robotics

Construction-specific robotics are taking off quickly, with players including KUKA Robotics, ABB Robotics, Dusty Robotics, and, of course, Boston Dynamics. Project managers widely use AI-assisted software to assign tasks based on capabilities and availability, track spending, forecast completion dates, and maintain regular communication across stakeholders. Procore, ClickUp, Kwant, BuildStream, and AutoDesk are competitors here.

The Bottom Line: Your industry dominance and domain expertise now depend on how well you know your vertical’s Generative Enterprise™ ecosystem players.

It has always been important to be informed about technology that could disrupt work in your vertical. With the recent expansion in AI capabilities and mainstream availability, it is now vital that you stay on top of the firms shaping your vertical in delivering the Generative Enterprise™.

Noting that Canvas, for example, was in stealth mode as early as 2017, we would be crazy to think our ecosystem isn’t about to become peppered with numerous Generative Enterprise™ applications breaking cover in an ever-widening range of industries. Stay close, and we’ll keep you updated as the journey accelerates.