Source丨51CTO technology stack (ID: blog51cto)
Author丨Xu Jiecheng
Picture source丨Tuchong Creative
To everyone's surprise, at the time when the fire of artificial intelligence was spreading all over the world, a company valued at US$1.5 billion and once evaluated by many media as the fastest growing AI unicorn in 2022 suddenly made public. announced layoffs.
On the morning of July 12, Dave Rogenmoser, the founder of the American AIGC unicorn Jasper, announced on LinkedIn that in view of the rapid changes in the industry, in order to focus more and adjust resources, the company will initiate layoffs. What is embarrassing is that this unicorn company established in 2021 just completed a financing of US$125 million in October last year. And in the past two years, it has achieved revenues of US$40 million and US$75 million respectively.
Founder's Layoff Announcement
Why did this artificial intelligence company, which was supposed to be in full swing, lay off staff? We seem to be able to see some clues from the layoff announcement written by the founder Dave himself.
The announcement mentioned that the AI industry has undergone tremendous changes in the past year. Although Jasper is serving many companies, as more companies in the industry start to use AI tools, today's needs are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Only more correct allocation resources to meet these growing demands.
This made us realize that the company needs to reshape the team to get more full action. So some positions in the company had to be eliminated, and even a large number of early employees would be affected. Although the transformation is difficult, only in this way can Jasper better coordinate resources to achieve long-term development.
Of course, at the end of this announcement, as the founder of Jasper and the initiator of this layoff, Dave also thanked all the employees who had made contributions to the company, and said that he would help the layoffs find and recommend suitable new employees. jobs.
In fact, in summary, all the twists and turns in Dave's layoff announcement can be replaced by a sentence of Internet jargon that "the company is at the point of life and death, so it must shrink its front and concentrate its superior forces on key battlefields." But a small contraction of the company has become a catastrophe for every employee.
However, what is confusing is that as an AI unicorn that has just completed a large amount of financing and has achieved high revenue for two consecutive years, Jasper should not be short of money, and the only way to speed up R&D is to lay off employees. Walk. So what is it that makes Dave so worried about Jasper's future? This has to mention Jasper.AI, the core product of Jasper.
18 month miracle
As an AIGC product developed based on the GPT3 model, Jasper.AI focuses on copy generation. Users can easily describe through text, generate Instagram titles with the help of Jasper.AI, write TikTok video scripts, advertising marketing texts, email content, etc.
Not only that, Jasper also provides more than 60 copywriting templates suitable for various use cases, supports more than 25 languages, and integrates tools such as Grammarly to check for plagiarism and error repairing involved in the generated content, truly realizing from advertising The leap from tool to AI content platform.
As an industry pioneer at that time, Jasper.AI quickly occupied the market once it was launched, and gained a large number of enterprise users in social media, cross-sea e-commerce, video production and other fields. As of 2022, more than 1 million people have tried Jasper.AI through free channels, and the number of paying users has exceeded 70,000.
Because of the strong influence and business prospects of this blockbuster product, Jasper received a $125 million Series A round of financing led by Insight Partners in October 2022, 18 months after the release of Jasper.AI. The value also jumped to 1.5 billion US dollars, successfully among the ranks of unicorns. At that time, Jasper had just been established for less than two years.
ChatGPT ends everything
However, all the good things came to an abrupt end on November 30, 2022. The release of ChatGPT gave Jasper a heavy blow. Compared with the paid Jasper.AI, ChatGPT was free and open once it was launched, and accumulated more than 1 million users within 5 days, and ChatGPT based on the GPT3.5 model was no less capable than Jasper.AI in many aspects.
Even after OpenAI launched the paid version of ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), it is still much cheaper than Jasper.AI ($49/month for personal version and $125/month for enterprise version) in terms of price. This also made a large number of shallow users of Jasper.AI turn to the embrace of ChatGPT shortly after the release of ChatGPT.
The advent of GPT4 a few months later completely buried the moat of Jasper.AI, which was not deep at all, and made Jasper, the original AIGC star company, a loser that was about to be eliminated overnight. Even though ChatGPT based on GPT4 is not specially developed for the media field, the gap in the model makes it almost crush Jasper.AI in any aspect.
As one user put it on Reddit, "Jasper, the AI is a sinking ship, and they're still using GPT3. After trying it out, GPT4 has an amazingly new level. Canceled my subscription to Jasper.AI and my only regret is not canceling it sooner."
It is precisely because of the impact of ChatGPT that the visit traffic of Jasper website has dropped by nearly 40% in just 3 months. Some industry insiders speculate that even though Jasper’s current economic situation may still be relatively optimistic, under such a trend, the company must consider relying on frugality to ensure long-term survival until they find a new growth point, and layoffs have become Jasper’s current situation. the only option when
No grass grows under the big tree
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently dozens of products developed based on the GPT model, ChatGPT, or models released by other technology companies similar to Jasper.AI in the United States, and some start-up companies behind these products are also developing Facing a similar dilemma as Jasper.
When technology giants iterate model versions or release similar products, some unintentional actions will easily destroy the weak moat of these shell products, and at this time, all that is left in front of these start-up companies is There are two ways-roll down, find another way to discover other advantages of the product, or be forced to leave the market amidst the sound of sighs.
As Zhu Xiaohu, managing director of GSR Ventures, said at the "2023 Dark Horse Industry Conference", ChatGPT is too powerful, which is not friendly to start-up companies. As large models and products like ChatGPT become mature, startups based on these foundations will be able to create less and less value. What's the point of these startups if 99% of the value is created by the model?
Regarding the forced layoffs of Jasper, Li Zhifei, CEO of Going Out and Asking, also shared his thoughts in the circle of friends. Product features for professional users, so as to retain professional users. But at present, it seems that this road is not optimistic.”
"If custom templates and UI processes cannot make the application resist the siphon effect of the basic model, what is the way for GenAI applications to survive? Are common SaaS routines such as data storage, team collaboration, and deep integration with workflow still useful? These The answer to the question is expected to become increasingly clear over the next 12 months."
Written at the end: both the cusp and the cusp
Finally, let's take a look at the entrepreneurial ecology of domestic AIGC applications. In fact, compared with the United States, the challenges that Chinese startups need to face are also thorny.
In terms of infrastructure ecology, the United States has basically formed several dominant trends led by OpenAI's GPT4. In addition, some open source large models have basically completed their own ecological construction. Entrepreneurial projects only need to make choices according to their own needs among these mature models.
At this time, the 100-model competition in China is still in full swing. Before the final winner is determined, no matter what the choice is, it will be a bet that cannot see the future clearly for start-up companies that focus on the AIGC application field.
In addition, while most of the leading domestic enterprises are self-developing large-scale models, they have already been eyeing the commercialization of upper-layer applications, and have completed the construction of the application layer in advance according to the characteristics of their respective enterprises. Under such a trend of giants taking everything, startup companies must find ways to build a strong enough moat for their products and services if they want to occupy a place in the limited living space.
In the final analysis, the carnival about artificial intelligence triggered by ChatGPT has not only created an outlet with infinite value on a global scale, but also pushed countless companies that coveted the opportunity to the cusp of risks. Without a clear view of the future, even the unicorn that was brilliant yesterday may fall from the top overnight.
Reference link:
http://news.sohu.com/a/697248777_104421
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7084564488154177536/
https://www.reddit.com/r/JasperAI/comments/14ri2m7/content_quality/