The Rise of AI-First UX – Why Founders Who Move Fast Win Big

The AI gold rush is already here and the early adopters are shaping the new default UX.

Especially for startups, positioning early is proving to be everything.

I’m seeing early entrants take serious market share. And because AI is moving so fast, new tools are being built on top of what they started.

Some standout tools that come to mind are Vercel and Cursor.

Vercel, being one of the early initiators of generative UI, brought to light what may be possible with AI. Soon after, we saw lots of other startups expanding on this idea - startups like Lovable, bolt, and Replit.

Vercel didn’t stop there. They went neck-deep and even created the AI SDK, which is currently heavily lifting the burden of setting up AI applications. Guillermo Rauch has my massive respect (constantly rethinks how the web plays a fundamental role in shaping the way we view apps).

Now, what this has led to is huge adoption of Next.js in AI applications. It's not uncommon that >70% of all AI apps are now built with Next.js. Developer tools with great UX are now Next.js first. And there’s almost an unspoken rule in the AI indie hacker community - the AI tech stack.

It all revolves around the same thing: Next.js, Supabase, BetterAuth, Tailwind CSS, ShadCN - with more and more libraries being built around this to optimise developer workflows and make shipping as painless as possible.

This is what positioning looks like.

The moment you step out to the "AI tech stack", you realise how much effort and foundation has already been laid down by Vercel.

Secondly, there’s Cursor, being the first to rethink AI integration into developer IDE workflows. Features like in-code AI diffing and agent modes have won them a significant share of the market, with other competitors playing catch-up.

And again, new tools are being built Cursor-first.

All of this points to one thing:

Early adopters who can rethink UX will win.

No one really knows yet how to build an AI app with the best UX. These are new waters. But that’s also a free opportunity for any product. You can disrupt your entire sector by thinking: AI-first UI.

Forget traditional UI.

It's time to rethink the entire product experience.