AI founders for hire: Startup hub Foundations launches service to connect businesses with builders

What happened

(Foundations Photo) Foundations, the startup community with hubs in Seattle and San Francisco , launched a service Tuesday that lets businesses contract with its members — many of them technical founders building companies of their own — to plan, develop and implement AI systems and applications. Foundations Design and Engineering is meant in part to give founders a new way to fund their companies as early-stage investment gets harder to raise.

Prices and the share of each contract that Foundations will keep are still being worked out. Founders and guests mingle at the opening of Foundations’ San Francisco hub earlier this year.

The service, called Foundations Design and Engineering, is designed in part to give those founders a new way to pay their bills as early-stage investment gets harder to raise . It also reflects how AI is changing tech, making software easier to build and leading some startups to act more like services firms, customizing their work for individual customers.