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AI Tools & Platforms

Tools and platforms referenced throughout Blueprint for an AI-First Company, organized by category. Each entry includes a brief description and official URL.

AI Coding Tools

Tools that integrate AI directly into the software development workflow. Referenced extensively in Chapter 5 (Building with AI) and the 8 Patterns for AI Coding framework.

Tool Description URL
Cursor AI-first code editor with inline completions, chat, and agent capabilities. Grew from $1M to $100M revenue in one year. https://cursor.com
GitHub Copilot AI pair programmer integrated into VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. 78% task completion rate; ~30% suggestion acceptance rate; 55% faster task completion. https://github.com/features/copilot
Replit Browser-based IDE with AI agent capabilities including "Max Autonomy" mode for extended AI-driven coding sessions. https://replit.com
Claude Code Anthropic's CLI-based AI coding agent. Uses CLAUDE.md files for persistent project context across sessions. https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code
Windsurf AI-powered IDE by Codeium with Cascade, an agentic coding workflow that reasons across your entire codebase. https://windsurf.com

Foundation Model Providers

The core model providers discussed in Chapter 3 (The AI Landscape) and the Foundation Models framework.

Provider Description URL
OpenAI Creator of GPT models. Strong multimodal capabilities (85.4% MMMU). Powers the majority of AI startup APIs. https://openai.com
Anthropic Creator of Claude 4.5 Sonnet. Leading code generation (97.8% security compliance on Claude 4.5 Sonnet) and analytical reasoning. https://anthropic.com
Google (Gemini) Gemini models with industry-leading context windows (2M tokens) and video understanding (87.6%). First FedRAMP High authorization for generative AI. https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/
Mistral European AI lab offering open-weight and commercial models. Fastest time-to-first-token at 0.30 seconds. Founded 2023, $6B valuation within 18 months. https://mistral.ai
Meta (Llama) Open-weight Llama model family. Used by Shopify for 40-60M daily inferences. Preferred for on-premises deployments in regulated industries. https://llama.meta.com
DeepSeek Chinese AI lab offering extremely cost-efficient models ($0.07/M tokens with cache). V3 trained for roughly $6M versus $100M+ for comparable models. Requires security controls due to documented vulnerabilities. https://www.deepseek.com

AI Infrastructure

Platforms for building, orchestrating, and monitoring AI applications. Referenced in Chapter 4 (Infrastructure) and Chapter 6 (Agent Architecture).

Tool Description URL
LangChain Framework for building LLM-powered applications with chains, agents, and tool integrations. https://www.langchain.com
LangSmith LangChain's platform for debugging, testing, evaluating, and monitoring LLM applications in production. https://www.langchain.com/langsmith
Weights & Biases ML experiment tracking, model versioning, and dataset management platform. https://wandb.ai
Helicone Open source LLM observability platform for logging, monitoring, and optimizing AI API usage and costs. https://www.helicone.ai
Portkey AI gateway for routing, load balancing, and managing multiple LLM providers through a unified API. https://portkey.ai

Vector Databases

Specialized databases for storing and querying embeddings, essential for RAG architectures. RAG adoption jumped from 31% to 51% in one year (referenced in the 10 Principles framework).

Database Description URL
Pinecone Fully managed vector database designed for high-performance similarity search at scale. https://www.pinecone.io
Weaviate Open source vector database with built-in vectorization modules and hybrid search capabilities. https://weaviate.io
Chroma Lightweight, open source embedding database designed for AI-native applications and rapid prototyping. https://www.trychroma.com
Qdrant Open source vector similarity search engine with extended filtering support and distributed deployment. https://qdrant.tech
pgvector Open source PostgreSQL extension for vector similarity search, enabling vector storage alongside relational data. https://github.com/pgvector/pgvector

AI Observability

Monitoring and evaluation platforms for AI systems in production. Addresses the observability gaps described in 5 Infrastructure Mistakes -- only 51% of organizations can confidently evaluate AI ROI.

Tool Description URL
Arize ML observability platform for monitoring model performance, detecting drift, and troubleshooting production issues. https://arize.com
WhyLabs AI observability platform focused on data quality monitoring, model performance tracking, and LLM security. https://whylabs.ai
Arthur AI AI performance monitoring with built-in bias detection, explainability, and compliance reporting. https://www.arthur.ai

AI Security

Security tools for protecting AI systems against prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data leakage. Addresses risks covered in 7 AI Risks and Mitigations.

Tool Description URL
Lakera Real-time AI security platform that detects prompt injections, data leakage, and content policy violations. https://www.lakera.ai
Robust Intelligence AI security and validation platform for testing model robustness, detecting adversarial attacks, and continuous monitoring. https://www.robustintelligence.com
Calypso AI AI security and trust platform providing inference-time monitoring, compliance automation, and risk management for enterprise AI. https://calypsoai.com