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The last mile problem in generative AI refers to the ability of enterprises to deploy applications to production.
For many companies, the answer lies in marketplaces, which enterprises and developers can browse for applications akin to the Apple app store and download new programs onto their phones. Providers such as AWS Bedrock and Hugging Face have begun building marketplaces, offering ready-built applications from partners that customers can integrate into their stack.
The latest entrant into the AI marketplace space is Lighting AI, the company that runs the open-source Python library PyTorch Lighting. Today it is launching AI Hub, a marketplace for both AI models and applications.
Lighting AI CEO William Falcon told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview that AI Hub allows enterprises to find the application they want without having all the other platforms required to run it.
Falcon noted that previously, enterprises had to find hardware providers that could run and host models. The next step was to find a way to deploy that model and make it into something useful.
“But then you need those models to do something, and that’s where the last mile issue is, that’s the end thing enterprises use, and most of that is from standalone companies that offer an app,” he said. “They bought all these tools, did a bunch of experiments, and then couldn’t deploy them or really take them to that last mile.”
Falcon added that AI Hub “removes the need for specialized platforms.” Enterprises can find any type of AI application they want in one place. This helps organizations stuck in the prototype phase move faster to deployment.
AI Hub as an app store
AI Hub hosts more than 50 APIs at launch, with a mix of foundation models and applications. It hosts many popular models, including DeepSeek-R1.
Enterprises can access AI Hub and find applications built using Lightning’s flagship product, Lightning AI Studio, or by other developers. They can then run these on Lightning’s cloud or private enterprise cloud environments. Organizations can link their AWS or Google Cloud instances and keep data within their company’s virt …