Data-driven analysis of the real structure of the $660B AI market, capital flows, the structural specifics of Korea and Asia, and the strategic gap between frontier labs and domain-specific AI.
Looks past headline ARR — into GPU margins, license fees, and undisclosed revenue mix. Built on primary sources (WIPO, OECD, IR filings) so hypotheses can be tested against the data.
Most useful for builders evaluating entry, corporate and fund strategists, and analysts who want to engage the bubble/boom debate with data. Korea's structural ceiling and ceiling-break get screen-time on the same page.
Three forces (deregulation × AI build × SI inertia) producing three scenarios for Korea's software market — Korea Vindicated, Double Loss, Bifurcation. The real branching point.
Korean SaaS companies blocked by SI and on-prem walls at home, then taking #1 positions in Japan — a natural experiment in Korea's build lock-in.
How public SW pricing, Hancom/groupware NIH, and 30 years of SI outsourcing produced Korea's build lock-in.
Three forces (deregulation × AI build × SI inertia) producing three scenarios for Korea's software market — Korea Vindicated, Double Loss, Bifurcation. The real branching point.
Korean SaaS companies blocked by SI and on-prem walls at home, then taking #1 positions in Japan — a natural experiment in Korea's build lock-in.
How public SW pricing, Hancom/groupware NIH, and 30 years of SI outsourcing produced Korea's build lock-in.
Korea's software spending sits at 0.3% of GDP (rank 51) vs. R&D at 5.0% (rank 1). The series thesis reduces five 'peculiarities' of Korea's market to one root cause.
Reading the 2026 AI Index left a recurring impression — this year's edition lands softer than last year's. This piece chases that impression. Side by side: the report's headline indicators, and the shifts that landed outside it during the eight weeks before publication.
AI products are fundamentally different from traditional software. This post distills 12 counterintuitive lessons from 20 builders, the CC/CD framework for AI development lifecycles, and a 3-phase eval system — all sourced from Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter.
Review of SAGEO Arena and CORE papers, analyzing the need for integrated GEO evaluation frameworks and the vulnerability of AI search rankings (91.4% Top-5 manipulation success rate).
Three Anthropic announcements across 96 hours in April 2026, broken down into Access, Capability, and Execution layers to reveal a coordinated vertical integration strategy.
Review of AutoGEO (quality-preserving auto-optimization) and E-GEO (e-commerce vertical benchmark) papers, analyzing how GEO optimization seeks a Pareto optimal between visibility and utility.
Review of the KDD 2024 GEO paper and Chen et al. 2025. Covers the academic definition of GEO, the PAWC visibility metric, and AI search's preference for earned media.
OSS monetization framework for solo builders. Outlines a 5-stage strategy using the 'What (Free) - How (Paid)' model to generate revenue without enterprise sales or managed infrastructure.
Analysis of AI infrastructure monetization. Details the 'software free, operations paid' model, where revenue is driven by GPU compute hours and data storage volume in the AI stack.
Analysis of major players entering the GEO market (SearchGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), their response characteristics, and step-by-step response strategies for enterprises.
Analysis of Langfuse and Dify's open-source monetization. Explains why observability layers are structurally superior to frameworks due to higher switching costs and continuous usage.
Three-scenario analysis (Bull/Base/Bear) of the AI market's $660B CapEx and survival strategies by segment
Based on ChartMogul data, an analysis of AI-native SaaS GRR at 40% -- the wrapper curse and the common traits of companies that broke through it
Analysis of four revenue models in the GEO agency and consulting market, risk mitigation strategies for search engine updates, and the necessity of transitioning to tech-driven SaaS.
A structural analysis of South Korea's AI strengths and weaknesses, the impact of the AI Basic Act, and five areas where the country can realistically compete
Monetization strategies of LangChain, LlamaIndex, and CrewAI. Analysis of the 'free framework, paid operations' pattern and its application to solo builder models.
Dissecting NVIDIA H100's 88% margin structure, analyzing how the AI chip monopoly impacts the ecosystem, and examining 3 scenarios for disruption
Cross-comparing Lex Fridman #490 (2/1) and Noh Jungseok EP91 (3/21) to trace how perceptions of AI agents shifted before and after OpenClaw
First installment of a series analyzing the AI market across three layers: infrastructure ($500B+), platform ($18B+), and applications ($80B+)
Comparative analysis of 10 major GEO SaaS players (Profound, Scrunch, Peec, etc.) covering features, pricing, and targets to derive WICHI's strategic positioning.
Predicting the 5-stage GEO value chain based on 20 years of SEO history, analyzing business opportunities and preemptive strategies for infrastructure, analytics, and specialized media.
Comparative analysis of ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews on accuracy, speed, and cost, with optimal engine recommendations for each query type.
Definition of GEO and its six structural differences from SEO. Proposes a new framework for brand visibility in an environment where AI search provides answers instead of link clicks.
Analyzing n8n's Fair-code license strategy as a defense against AWS risk in open source monetization, and how licensing defines the boundaries of viable business models.
Comparison of open source licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSL, etc.) and a decision framework based on project scale and revenue model, including MMU's choice of MIT.