Charles Hudson questions whether AI is genuine innovation or a rebrand that lets struggling specialist funds repackage old theses. Healthcare and fintech funds are relabeling SaaS investments as AI to reignite returns in sectors where momentum has stalled.
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The SaaS example I feel like is directly related to how I feel about AI right now. I think specialist funds that came up maybe after SAS emerged who are maybe healthcare focused fintech now for the past five years like but we do SaaS for healthcare, we'll do SaaS for fintech now. I feel like the hype cycles are almost a good way of dressing up, maybe like an overdone thesis. So AI right now is that again I'm picking on healthcare because just that's my background. If you were a healthcare only fund the past X amount of years and you're seeing returns plummet on your digital health investments or tech enabled services, AI right now opens up this whole new window for you to suddenly get re excited about this industry that you've been in for so long. But to your point, does that make you still a good specialist or are you just kind of jumping in on the hype cycles and how long will it take for us to figure out who's good at this or not?