Anurag Gurtu’s vision for Airrived is to give the best business minds easy access to, and full control over, artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help them reach their goals. And if that means you eventually do that without Airrived playing a major role, even better.
Gurtu co-founded Airrived, where he serves as CEO in 2024. It’s his seventh startup. Over his career, Gurtu has worked with various aspects of AI.
Airrived was created to democratize AI. Businesspeople could become AI experts so they could solve business problems.
That picture was formed from Gurtu’s experiences with venture capitalists and founders. Some VCs lose nine out of every 10 bets; if they were a money manager, they’d be out of work. Most startups also fail, leaving their founders with nothing save years of work and missed family time.
The model is clearly broken. Luckily, AI can replace it with something better.
“You don’t need point-product companies anymore.”
“They should be platforms, one or many, that should be able to create point-product companies.”
Airrived solves the 3 Ts – trust, tokenomics, and talent
Gurtu wants to give creators the ability to explain what they want to do and allow them to build a solution. He also wants to erase some problems he repeatedly sees in APAC and the Middle East. Call them the 3 Ts: trust, tokenomics, and talent.
Many companies in these regions don’t trust sending their data to any large-language model; it needs stronger protection. They also know that the more agentic they go, the more data gets squeezed into tokens. Why should they harm their business model and leave data subject to a small consortium that can charge whatever they wish?
Good AI talent is scarce. Gurtu said his ideal business model lets creators easily seek the art of the possible. That doesn’t mean writing code or remaining vendor-dependent at an annual cost in the millions. If he has to build more data centers (Airrived has data centers in Qatar, Turkey, and Vietnam), so be it. If he must ship rack servers to a customer, that’s fine too.
How Airrived tracks AI sprawl
While some agents may operate independently, in large operations and governments (Airrived’s target market), agents mass together to create apps, and apps mass together to guide operations. Tracking becomes a challenge.
Airrived’s dashboard organizes all vendors. Hover over one and see network data, costs, agreements, and more. There’s also an app marketplace where creators can tap previously developed solutions.
Should nothing suitable be available, the system quickly guides a user through the design process. It asks them what they want to create, asks clarifying questions, and suggests alternatives. Solutions can be developed in a few minutes. The more information it gets, the more precise it is. Progress can be tracked on the dashboard.
“If you’re a businessperson, all you have to explain is the problem you want to solve, and you can say what you want in the agentic app,” Gurtu said. “After that, we do the heavy lifting, and in a few minutes you have a full app, which you might now even find in the market.
“You can define what you want and set your expectations without a consulting company. You have the power to solve problems on your own.”
Irrelevancy is relevant
I remarked that Gurtu must have garnered some strange looks when he shared his vision with fellow entrepreneurs and VCs. No prolonged dependency on Airrived?
Simply put, he looked ahead and knew the old methods wouldn’t fly.
“When I look at them and ask what the revenue per employee is, what I feel is that they are a body shop portraying themselves as an AI company,” Gurtu said. “If they are throwing in 20 or 30 (people) at it, it doesn’t work.
“Some VCs are okay with that. They pump up the value and bring others in at that higher number. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
“It’s a contrarian thought I have.”
Airrived’s Agentic Observability increases visibility
Airrived recently unveiled Agentic Observability, an operating system expansion that provides end-to-end visibility into AI agent behavior. Agentic Observability seeks answers about creation, authorizations, data flow, and cost. Consider the complexity of that task in a large entity with thousands of apps, integrations, and links.
Click on an agent and see all sources it connects with across departments. Click on an agentic app and see every agent inside, along with relevant data.
“Everybody running against apps on Airrived’s Agentic Operating System gets visibility and control of what’s happening in the agentic journey within their organization,” Gurtu said.
Gurtu has also considered accountability. Apps come with access controls. They allow companies to limit access to the entire app or specific components. Visibility can be restricted, and a human-in-the-loop mandated.
