You open LinkedIn or any news site and it is about one thing only. The billion-dollar race between the tech giants out of Silicon Valley and the rapid rise of Chinese AI models. Nice for the shareholders. But if you run a wholesaler in Veenendaal or an installation company in Brabant, it probably feels like a completely different world.
Even so, at ai-werkers we keep our eyes firmly on what is happening abroad. More than that: we actively scrape the American and Chinese markets every day for the latest developments and lessons learned.
Not to sound clever with fashionable terms, but for one simple reason: that is where the mistakes are being made at the moment, and we can learn from them over here.
Filtering out the hype
In the United States, AI start-ups are springing up everywhere. They build tools for absolutely everything. The hard reality? At least 90% of that software is redundant, far too expensive or simply not mature enough for daily use.
By scanning that market continuously, we act as your filter. We see hypes come and go. Only once a tool is past the teething trouble and genuinely saves time or money do we bring the technology over here. So you do not get experimental software, you get proven tools.
Looking at Chinese execution
Where America currently leads on large language models and software, China is miles ahead when it comes to sheer execution. The integration of AI into hardware, e-commerce and logistics is moving at speed there. Think of far-reaching automation in warehouses, visual AI for quality control on the production floor, and customer service bots that do not get stuck in irritating menu trees.
Those practical, directly applicable solutions are now slowly filtering through to Europe. Because we follow the developments there closely, we can be the first to translate those techniques into things that scale for small and mid-sized companies in the Netherlands.
Picking out what is worth having
Innovation does not stop at the border. But let us be honest: you have a business to run. You have no time at all to follow the tech war day by day or to work out which of the thousand new tools actually works.
That is our job. We pick out the few things that are worth having. We look for those few specific AI applications that do not cost millions, but that you can put into your company next week. No vague theory from Silicon Valley, just hours saved on the shop floor.
Want to know which tools we have scouted recently for your line of work?
Get in touch for a short introduction. We are happy to show you what is already possible today without huge IT budgets.