Vercel, a cloud platform for web apps, had hundreds of developers migrate off its platform overnight after CEO Guillermo Rauch posted a photo with Israeli PM Netanyahu on Sept 29, 2025, praising their discussions on AI and expressing optimism for Israel.
“Enjoyed my discussion with PM Netanyahu on how AI education and literacy will keep our free societies ahead,” Rauch wrote, while expressing hope for “peace, safety, and greatness for Israel and its neighbors.”
The post quickly racked up nearly five million views. Shortly after, a pattern emerged in online forums and private engineering groups: hundreds of developers were leaving Vercel. Not loudly, not with open letters or coordinated campaigns, but by doing the gritty technical work—reconfiguring deployments, moving DNS records, rewriting files line by line.
I wouldn’t describe Vercel as an AI company. I’m not defending them, but if we just start labeling any company that offers an AI product as AI, then literally every tech company will be an AI company.
Is it still fashionable to claim you were always an AI company, and just developed <unrelated product> to build the capital to achieve your AI goals?
In any case, AI is (and always was) a meaningless buzz word. Worse, it’s a pop-culture adjacent buzz word.