Limits of AI-Enabled Value Creation - An explorative study on Artificial Intelligence in early-stage startups: implications for value creation, value capture, and dynamic capabilities

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) transforms business operations inearly-stage startups. Although AI is widely accessible through commercially available tools, itsbroader implications for value creation, value capture, and organizational capabilities remainunderexplored. To address this gap, the study adopts a qualitative research design based onsemi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and AI specialists in SiliconValley and analyzes the data through an abductive approach. The findings show that AI isapplied across a wide range of business activities and can be viewed through three mechanisms:replacing routine tasks, reinforcing existing processes, and revealing new opportunities. AIincreases efficiency, lowers technical barriers, and accelerates product development. However,its role in enabling fundamentally novel business models is limited, as it primarily supportsincremental innovation through the recombination of existing knowledge. The study alsoidentifies key constraints and trade-offs in AI adoption, including the risk of hallucinations,dependence on external vendors, and issues related to data confidentiality and governance. As AIbecomes embedded in workflows, it shifts roles toward orchestration, validation, and decisionprocesses. This thesis contributes to theory in two ways. First, it shows that AI enhances valuecreation but constrains value capture due to vendor dependence and commoditization ofcapabilities. Second, it introduces three AI-Mediated Capabilities–AI Orchestration, DataSovereignty, and Cognitive Control. Overall, the findings show that value creation and capturewith AI depend not only on adoption but also on how firms govern the integration of AI intotheir business models.