[AznHisoka]

I would argue at least 3 of the 4 you mentioned are the shovels in AI. They are what everyone uses to build AI tools, which is the gold in this analogy. Anyone that offers infrastructure - hardware or software - around building AI is selling shovels IMO. Of course, to complicate things, they all sell applications to the enterprise too, so they’re not pure shovels.

The other 3rd category that are shovels is anything that provides data to LLMs. This include media publishers like Reddit. They definitely are not hard tech.

Anyone that is building any tools or applications whose target market is not companies who are building AI applications, is chasing after gold.