The AI Cloud
Key ideas
Rauch argues the cloud must shift from serving pages to running agents, from reporting problems to delivering fixes, and from closed platforms to an open web of agents.
- 1
Vercel began with an inherited burden
Rauch writes that Vercel came out of his 2015 frustration that the web's pixels, and the experience of crafting them, were not improving much. He says the cloud had carried the burden of data centers over into digital form, taking time from product and customers, and describes the response as leading with developer experience, using frameworks that generate the infrastructure on deployment.
- 2
Vercel must stay at Day One
After listing Vercel's results, Rauch writes that winning the next decade means heeding its hyperscaler partner's advice that it's always Day One. He names three trends he says are shaking up the web, the cloud and software: pages to agents, problems to solutions, and closed to open.
- 3
Agents change what the cloud must do
Rauch defines an agent as software that performs a set of steps on our behalf and delivers an outcome. Unlike pages, he says, agents are not usually synchronous, can think for long periods and can write their own code, which is making Vercel rethink the services that make up the cloud.
- 4
Deliver solutions rather than more alerts
Rauch believes AI will bring more autonomy to the run phase of software, with a cloud that monitors, optimizes, secures and repairs itself. He argues that today's telemetry costs a great deal and still relies on humans opening dashboards and fixing issues by hand.
- 5
Keep the agent web open
Rauch writes that the first wave of AI has been dominated by closed models, proprietary SDKs and centralized interfaces. He argues for many agents and model choice over one interface and one SDK, pointing to Vercel's AI SDK and to the early success of MCP.
In Guillermo’s words
“The time you should have spent on the pixels... was spent on the configs.”
“Fundamentally, we believe an AI Cloud shouldn't give you problem after problem (alerts, 5xx errors, latency spikes, traffic anomalies...). It should give you solutions: pull requests, recommendations, and automated actions.”
“We can either give up the web, proxy all our data and intent through one closed mega-app, or reinvent it together in the open.”
About this entry
- Published
- Oct 17, 2025
- Publisher
- rauchg.com
- Type
- Essay
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
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