Horizontal AI
FoundationsCore AI Concepts
Horizontal AI is a general-purpose model or platform designed to work across industries and use cases, rather than being built around the specifics of any one of them. Horizontal models are often the cheaper, faster starting point. The burden of adapting one to a regulated, domain-specific workflow falls on whoever deploys it: the fine-tuning, the guardrails, the integration.
In practice
The build-versus-buy question for most enterprises is whether the use case needs a model that already knows the industry, or one the business is prepared to teach. Price the teaching as well as the licence, because horizontal tools look cheap until the adaptation lands on an internal team.