[barneso]

It's very hard to find a viable business model in machine learning or AI tools and platforms at the moment: the size of the market is small, and most money is being made by the end users. As a result companies who could get value from AI want to own it themselves (to keep all of this money themselves). It's a little bit like everyone wanting to own their own data center full of servers in 1999; at some point it will seem silly, but it's hard to sell against because it's accepted wisdom.

Doing services is a reasonable response to that market dynamic, although they certainly had a product vision too.

Without knowing any of the details, I'd say they can be proud of what was accomplished and how they managed their exit: 1. From what I've heard, some of the work they did in the medical domain really did help save lives or make them better 2. They probably returned the capital to their investors and kept most of their employees 3. They didn't get bought by a company that would be horrible to work for or is in terminal decline

Credit where it's due: they entered a rough market and managed it well.