How Founders Use AI · The AI map

Which AI tool is for which job.

The tools that lead each kind of work with AI as of 29 October 2026: what each is for, when to pick it over the others, what it costs, and the page every claim was read from. What changed since July.

Models and assistants

AI assistants

A chat app you talk to every day to answer questions, write, research, read files and, more and more, carry out tasks for you.

  1. ChatGPT New The default general assistant: chat, files, images, deep research, Codex and, on Pro, an always-on agent called a dot.
  2. Claude New A careful writer and work partner, strong on long documents, coding (Claude Code) and agent work in Chrome and Microsoft 365.
  3. Gemini New Google's assistant, tied into Gmail, Docs, Drive and Android, now on Gemini 4 Argon for paid plans.
  4. Microsoft Copilot Microsoft's assistant, free on the web and built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook with a Microsoft 365 plan.
  5. Meta AI New A free assistant inside WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, running Muse Spark 1.1 in its Thinking mode since July 2026.
  6. Grok New An assistant with live access to posts on X, plus Grok Bot agents and Grok Build for making apps.
  7. Perplexity An answer engine that searches the web and cites its sources, and lets you pick between models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Moonshot, Z.ai and xAI.
When to pick each, and what changed

Frontier models

The most capable models from the big labs, sold in tiers: a top model for the hardest work, an everyday model, and a cheap, fast one for volume.

  1. GPT-6 family: GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6.1 Terra, GPT-6 Luna New Astra for the hardest reasoning, coding and computer use; 6.1 Sol for everyday complex work near Astra's level; 6.1 Terra for fast visual reasoning, computer use and writing; Luna for cheap, high-volume tasks.
  2. Claude Fable 5.1 New Anthropic's top public model, for demanding reasoning and long agent runs; the same model as Mythos 5.1 with cyber and biology safeguards.
  3. Claude 5.5 family: Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 New Opus 5.5 is Anthropic's recommended starting point for coding and knowledge work; Sonnet 5.5 balances speed and intelligence; Haiku 5.5 is for high-volume work like classification, extraction and routing.
  4. Gemini 4 Argon New Google's flagship reasoning model for complex software, maths, science and multi-step agents, with long output up to 1M tokens.
  5. Gemini 3.8 Flash New Google's most capable Flash model, an everyday workhorse for coding, agents and enterprise work, with a free API tier.
  6. Grok 4.7 New xAI's most capable model, for coding and knowledge work.
  7. Muse Spark 1.1 New Meta's multimodal reasoning model for agents, computer use and coding, behind Meta AI and a new Meta Model API.
When to pick each, and what changed

Open-weight models

Models whose weights you can download and run on your own servers, or call cheaply through a host, so your data and costs stay in your hands.

  1. DeepSeek V4 (DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash) New Strong open models for coding and agents under the MIT licence, with a very cheap hosted API and a 1M-token context.
  2. Qwen3.8 New Alibaba's open family, from a 27B model that sees images and video to a very large flagship, for coding, research and agents.
  3. Kimi K3 New A 2.8-trillion-parameter open model for long coding sessions and knowledge work, with vision and a 1M-token context.
  4. GLM-5.3 New An open model aimed at complex coding and long-horizon tasks; Z.ai calls it the most capable open-weights model for coding.
  5. Gemma 4 Small open models (2B to 31B) that run on a phone, a laptop or one GPU, and handle images, video and audio.
  6. gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b OpenAI's open-weight reasoning models; the 120b fits on one 80GB GPU and the 20b suits local use.
  7. Sarvam-105B and Sarvam-30B Indian-built open models trained with a focus on the Indian context, with state-of-the-art results for their size across 22 Indian languages; they power Sarvam's Indus chat app.
When to pick each, and what changed

Decision models

Models that answer typed questions about a situation with a choice, a score or a probability your code can use directly, instead of writing text.

  1. Jev New A model that takes program state plus typed questions and returns a choice or score with calibrated probabilities, for routing, triage, guardrails and game or browser agents.
  2. Decisions API (on GPT-6 Luna) New An OpenAI endpoint that returns a probability, a choice from a fixed set, or a score against a rubric, about 10 times faster than the Responses API.
When to pick each, and what changed

Building with AI

Coding agents

Agents that read a codebase, write and change code, run tests and open pull requests for a developer, in the terminal, the editor or the cloud.

  1. Claude Code New An agent for developers that plans, writes code, runs tests and opens pull requests, from the terminal, IDE, Slack, web or desktop app.
  2. Codex New OpenAI's coding agent, in ChatGPT, the editor and the terminal, that runs many agents in parallel and reviews pull requests.
  3. Cursor New An AI code editor with agents, cloud agents and AI code review (Bugbot), now sold alongside xAI's Grok models.
  4. GitHub Copilot New AI in the editor, the CLI and GitHub itself: agent mode, a cloud agent, code review and a Copilot app for multi-repo projects.
  5. Devin New An autonomous AI software engineer that works in the cloud, plus Devin Desktop (the next generation of Windsurf) as an IDE and command centre for agents.
  6. Google Antigravity New Google's agent-first coding platform: a desktop app, CLI, IDE and extensions for other editors, running Gemini models.
When to pick each, and what changed

App builders

Build a working website or app by describing it in plain words, with hosting, a database and sign-in handled for you, no coding needed.

  1. Lovable New Chat to build and publish full web apps, with hosting, a database and AI features from one credit balance.
  2. Replit New An agent that builds, hosts and now monitors apps and websites in the browser, with databases and integrations built in.
  3. Bolt Builds custom web apps for a business from a description, with your own domain on paid plans.
  4. v0 New Generates web apps and interfaces you can edit visually and deploy to Vercel or sync to GitHub.
  5. Base44 An all-in-one builder for apps with users, data and integrations, owned by Wix.
  6. Google AI Studio (Build mode) Describe an app and Google's agent builds a web app or native Android app, with deploy to Cloud Run or sync to GitHub.
  7. Emergent Agents that build full-stack web and mobile apps, from websites and CRMs to dashboards.
When to pick each, and what changed

Design and presentations

Tools that turn a description into designs, prototypes, slides, sites or images, and help designers edit faster.

  1. Figma (Figma agent and Figma Make) New The design canvas with an agent that edits files using your design system, and Figma Make, which turns prompts into working prototypes.
  2. Canva New Design anything from social posts to decks with AI tools, Magic Layers and its own image model, Canva Craft.
  3. Claude Design Describe a visual and Claude builds a first version on brand: mockups, one-pagers, clickable flows, slides.
  4. Gamma Makes presentations, documents, websites and social posts from a prompt.
  5. Framer A website builder with AI and agents that design, write and publish marketing sites.
When to pick each, and what changed

Spreadsheets, data and internal tools

AI that builds and explains spreadsheets, analyses data, and builds internal apps and databases a team runs on.

  1. Claude for Excel Claude inside Excel (and Word, PowerPoint, Outlook): ask about any cell, change assumptions without breaking formulas, build models from scratch.
  2. Copilot in Excel New Microsoft's AI in Excel: prepares data, learns repeatable tasks as skills, and turns a workbook into an interactive report.
  3. Gemini in Google Sheets New Writes and fixes formulas, finds trends, fills cells from the web with cited sources, and turns sheets into mini-apps.
  4. Julius Upload data and ask questions in plain words to get analysis, charts and reports.
  5. Hex New A data workspace where analysts and agents query, model and publish analysis together, with review of agent-written code.
  6. Retool Builds internal apps, workflows and agents on top of your own databases and APIs.
  7. Notion New Docs and databases with Notion Agent and Custom Agents that fill databases, run tasks and connect to 150+ tools.
When to pick each, and what changed

Agents and research

Agents that do tasks for you

An agent takes a goal, uses its own computer, browser and your connected apps to carry out the steps, and comes back with the finished work or a question.

  1. dots New An always-on agent with its own cloud computer and browser that works on your goals in the background and learns how you like things done.
  2. ChatGPT Work New The agent side of ChatGPT: longer, multi-step jobs that end in a document, spreadsheet, presentation, report or Site.
  3. Claude New Hand Claude a big task (a report, a deck, research across your connected tools) from any conversation and let it keep working after you close the laptop.
  4. Tasks in Gemini Give Gemini a goal or an ongoing job (watch prices, clear newsletters, book things, build files) and let it run on a schedule.
  5. Manus New A general agent that builds slides, websites, games and videos and runs long jobs on a cloud computer of its own.
  6. Perplexity Computer A digital worker that browses, researches, creates files and apps, and connects your tools, running in the background for hours.
When to pick each, and what changed

AI browsers

A web browser with an assistant built in that can read your open tabs, answer questions about them, and click through sites to finish a task for you.

  1. Comet A full browser with Perplexity's assistant built in, for research, email replies, shopping and errands across tabs.
  2. Gemini in Chrome Gemini inside the Chrome you already use: summarise pages, compare up to 10 tabs, work across Gmail and Calendar, and let auto browse do tasks.
  3. Claude in Chrome New A Chrome extension that lets Claude read the page and act on it (click, type, fill forms) using your existing logins.
  4. Microsoft Edge with Copilot Copilot built into Edge to summarise tabs, compare options and group your browsing into Journeys.
  5. Dia A work browser that pulls context from your tabs and tools (Slack, Notion, Teams, Google Workspace) into briefs, answers and decks.
  6. ChatGPT desktop app New ChatGPT's own built-in browser, where Work gathers information from websites and works with web tools; it replaced the Atlas browser.
When to pick each, and what changed

No-code automation with AI steps

Tools that connect your apps into workflows that run on their own, with AI steps or agents in the middle to read, sort, write or decide.

  1. n8n New Visual workflows and AI agents with full control, billed per workflow run rather than per step, and able to run on your own server.
  2. Zapier The widest app catalogue, with Agents, Copilot, Canvas and MCP on every plan, for simple trigger-and-action automation.
  3. Make Visual scenarios with branching and data handling across more than 1,000 apps, plus AI agents.
  4. Lindy An AI teammate that works in Slack and email: triages inboxes and support queues, researches, and asks approval before anything goes out.
  5. Gumloop Build AI agents and workflows across your tools, with 35+ models and a browser and CLI.
When to pick each, and what changed

Research and search

Tools that search many sources for you, read them, and give you a cited answer or a full report you can check.

  1. Perplexity Quick answers with sources from the live web, and a Research mode for longer reports.
  2. ChatGPT deep research A multi-step research agent in ChatGPT that browses many sources and writes a long, cited report.
  3. Gemini Deep Research Browses hundreds of sites, and your Gmail, Drive and Chat if you allow it, then writes a multi-page report you can also hear as audio.
  4. Claude Research Claude searches the web and your connected tools and returns a cited write-up.
  5. Gemini Notebook New Formerly NotebookLM: upload your own sources and ask questions, get summaries, and make audio and video overviews grounded in them.
  6. Elicit Searching and extracting data from 138 million academic papers, including systematic literature reviews.
  7. Consensus An academic search engine over 400 million peer-reviewed papers that says what the research finds, with citations.
When to pick each, and what changed

Meeting notes and everyday productivity

Tools that take notes in your meetings, write the summary and action items, and help with email, documents and your calendar.

  1. Granola An AI notepad that captures meeting audio from your device, with no bot joining the call, and turns your rough notes into full ones.
  2. Otter Live transcription and summaries of meetings and recordings.
  3. Fireflies A meeting notetaker that transcribes in more than 100 languages and connects notes to your other tools.
  4. Meetings plugin for ChatGPT New Takes meeting notes and saves summaries with action items in ChatGPT Space, then ChatGPT can update a plan or draft the follow-up; audio is deleted once notes are ready.
  5. Notion AI An agent inside your Notion workspace plus AI Meeting Notes, so notes, docs and tasks live in one place.
  6. Superhuman A suite of Grammarly for writing, Superhuman Mail for email, Docs, and Go, an assistant that works across your tools.
  7. Motion Plans your calendar and tasks for you, fitting work around meetings.
When to pick each, and what changed

Making media

Video generation

Turns a written prompt, a photo or a reference clip into a short video, usually with sound.

  1. Gemini Omni Flash and Veo 3.1, in Flow New Generating and then editing video by conversation (Omni), or cinematic clips with native audio up to 4K (Veo 3.1), inside Google's Flow studio and the Gemini app.
  2. Kling 4.0 New Long single takes (up to 30 seconds in one pass) with steady fast motion and up to 15 reference assets.
  3. Seedance 2.5 New 30-second clips in one run, built from many references at once (up to 30 images, 10 videos and 10 audio clips).
  4. Runway (Gen-4.5, Aleph 2.0) A full video studio: its own Gen-4.5 model plus Aleph 2.0 for changing footage, with Kling and Seedance models in the same account.
  5. Luma (Ray3.2) An agent-led studio for brand work: its own Ray3.2 video model and Uni-1 image model, alongside Veo, Kling, Seedance and others.
  6. Midjourney Video Animating a still image into a 5-second clip, in Midjourney's own look.
  7. Pika (Pika 2.5) Quick, playful social clips and effects, with Seedance 2.5 and other models also on offer.
When to pick each, and what changed

Images

Makes a picture from a description, or edits a photo you already have by telling it what to change.

  1. Nano Banana 2.1 New Fast image generation and conversational editing in the Gemini app, with sharp text in images and the same character kept across edits.
  2. ChatGPT Images 2.5 (GPT-Image-2.5) New Making and editing images inside ChatGPT, with templates, sketch-to-image and comments on mobile.
  3. Midjourney V8.2 New Images with a strong, considered look, tuned to your taste through Personalization.
  4. Ideogram 4.5 Images with words in them: posters, banners, logos, and transparent-background designs for print.
  5. FLUX New Image models for developers, through an API, including open-weight models you can run yourself (FLUX 3 Image Klein).
  6. Adobe Firefly Images and vectors trained on licensed content, wired into Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere, with Google and OpenAI models on the same credits.
  7. Canva Designs for social posts, decks and ads, with AI tools (resize, translate, remove background) built into the editor.
When to pick each, and what changed

Avatars and voice

Makes a presenter video from a script, or reads text aloud in a natural voice, including a clone of your own.

  1. HeyGen A digital twin of you presenting from a script, translated with lip sync into 175+ languages and dialects.
  2. Synthesia Training, onboarding and explainer videos with stock or custom avatars, translated into 140+ languages.
  3. ElevenLabs (Eleven v4) New Expressive voiceovers, audiobooks and voice clones in 90+ languages, plus a fast Turbo version for voice agents.
  4. Sarvam (Bulbul V4 Flash, Dubbing) Natural voices in 11 Indian languages, and dubbing one video into 12 Indian languages with each speaker's voice kept.
  5. Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS New Speech from text for developers, with voice design and voice replication in the Gemini API.
When to pick each, and what changed

Music and audio

Makes songs, background music or a spoken audio summary from a description or your own documents.

  1. Suno (v6) New Full songs with vocals from a prompt, plus editing, stems and a studio for producers.
  2. Eleven Music (Music v2.5) New Licensed music for ads, branded content and video, cleared for commercial use depending on plan.
  3. Lyria 3.5 (Flow Music) New Full-length songs with vocals and control over tempo, key and structure, in Flow Music, Gemini and YouTube Shorts.
  4. Gemini Notebook Audio Overviews New Turning your own documents into a spoken summary: a two-host deep dive, a short brief, a critique or a debate, in 80+ languages.
When to pick each, and what changed

Video editing

Cuts, cleans up and repurposes footage you already have, often by editing a transcript instead of a timeline.

  1. Descript Editing talking videos and podcasts by editing the transcript, with Underlord, an AI co-editor.
  2. Adobe Premiere Professional editing with Generative Extend, object masking, text-based editing and caption translation into 27 languages.
  3. DaVinci Resolve 21 Editing, colour, effects and audio in one app, with AI search (IntelliSearch), voice isolation and smart reframing.
  4. OpusClip Cutting a long video or podcast into short vertical clips for social, with captions and B-roll.
  5. CapCut A popular mobile and desktop editor with AI captions and effects for short social video.
When to pick each, and what changed

AI at work

Prospecting and sales

These tools find the right buyers, fill in their contact details, write and send outreach, and record and analyse sales calls.

  1. Clay New Building lead lists and enriching them from 150+ data providers, with an AI research agent (Claygent) that fills in custom data points.
  2. Apollo An all-in-one contact database, email sequences, dialer and call recording for small sales teams.
  3. Instantly Sending cold email at volume from many inboxes, with a lead database and an AI sales agent.
  4. Attio New A flexible CRM for startups, with AI research agents, call recording, sequences and custom agents.
  5. Gong New Recording and analysing sales calls, forecasting deals and running sales agents for revenue teams.
  6. 11x AI agents that run outbound email and social (Alice) and voice calls for inbound and expansion (Julian).
  7. Artisan (Ava) An AI BDR called Ava that finds leads, writes outreach, handles replies and books meetings.
When to pick each, and what changed

Marketing, ads and AI search

These tools write marketing copy, run ad campaigns with AI targeting and creative, and track how often AI answer engines mention your brand.

  1. Jasper Writing on-brand marketing content for teams that manage several brands and campaigns.
  2. Copy.ai AI workflows for go-to-market teams: content, prospecting and CRM enrichment. Copy.ai is now part of Fullcast, which bought it in October 2025.
  3. Meta Advantage+ New Meta's automated ads on Facebook and Instagram: AI picks audiences, placements and creative, with an AI business assistant inside Ads Manager.
  4. AI Max for Search (Google Ads) New Google's AI layer on Search campaigns: it matches more search terms and writes ad text from your site. Performance Max does the same across all Google channels.
  5. Profound Tracking how your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and other answer engines, with an AI Marketer agent.
  6. Semrush AI Visibility Classic SEO plus AI-search visibility: prompt tracking and brand performance in AI answers. Adobe completed its purchase of Semrush in April 2026.
When to pick each, and what changed

Customer support agents

These AI agents answer customers on chat, email, WhatsApp and phone, resolve common requests, and hand the hard ones to a person.

  1. Fin New An AI support agent that resolves conversations across chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS and voice, on Intercom's helpdesk or yours.
  2. Decagon New AI concierge agents for large companies across chat, email and voice, now also used for onboarding, payments and sales.
  3. Sierra New Customer-facing AI agents for big consumer brands, from Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor's company.
  4. Zendesk AI agents New AI agents built into the Zendesk helpdesk, with ready-made Industry Agents (commerce first) and no-code Custom Agents.
  5. Freshdesk with Freddy AI Agent A helpdesk with an AI agent included, a cheaper start for small teams.
  6. Yellow.ai An enterprise platform for voice, chat and email agents for customer and employee service.
  7. Jio Haptik (and SOLO) New Enterprise AI agents on WhatsApp, voice and web; its new SOLO app gives small businesses two AI teammates for marketing (Tara) and sales and support (Ved).
When to pick each, and what changed

Legal and contracts

These tools draft, review and manage contracts and do legal research, but a qualified lawyer should still check anything you sign, file or rely on.

  1. Harvey New Legal AI for law firms and in-house teams: research, drafting, document review in Vault, and agents for whole legal tasks.
  2. Legora New A collaborative legal AI platform for lawyers, with research, review and agents, and an Intake front door for in-house teams in Slack.
  3. Spellbook AI contract drafting and review inside Microsoft Word, plus a multi-document agent called Associate.
  4. SpotDraft Contract lifecycle management: templates, AI review in Word (VerifAI), e-signatures, a repository and legal intake.
When to pick each, and what changed

Finance and accounting

These tools build and check financial models, manage company spending and cards, keep the books, and file taxes.

  1. Claude for Excel An Excel add-in that explains a workbook with cell-level citations, updates assumptions without breaking formulas, fixes errors and builds models.
  2. Ramp New Corporate cards, expenses, bill pay and accounting automation with AI that reviews expenses and tracks AI spend.
  3. Brex Corporate cards, expenses, travel and bill pay with AI-powered rules, for startups and growing companies.
  4. Zeni AI bookkeeping with a dedicated human finance team, plus optional CFO and tax services, for US startups.
  5. Zoho Books Indian accounting software with GST filing, e-invoicing and AI receipt scanning.
When to pick each, and what changed

Hiring and HR

These tools find candidates, write outreach, screen applications and take interview notes, so a small team can hire faster.

  1. Hiring Assistant (LinkedIn) New An AI agent inside LinkedIn Recruiter that sources candidates, reviews applicants and manages your talent pool.
  2. Juicebox AI people search and sourcing agents that find candidates from plain-language descriptions.
  3. Ashby An applicant tracking system with AI candidate search, AI application review, fraud detection and talent rediscovery.
  4. Metaview AI interview notetaker plus sourcing and application review agents for recruiters.
  5. Naukri AI REX New Naukri's agentic sourcing platform that takes a role from requirement to shortlist using its candidate database.
When to pick each, and what changed

Checked 29 October 2026. Prices and rankings in AI move every few months, so each tool links the page its claims were read from. Back to How Founders Use AI.

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