As a pillar of the region’s technological progress, the University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub has become a hot spot for AI innovation across Southwest Ohio.

UC's team spoke with Matthew Sias, founder of AI-driven startup Innovation Acceleration, and Sylvie O’Connor, head of customer success at Tembo, to discover their top AI platforms. Both Innovation Acceleration and Tembo are driving change from the heart of the Cincinnati Innovation District, with AI playing a critical role in each company’s development.

AI tools are intended to supplement human-driven work and should not replace personal oversight. With that in mind, here are Sias and O’Connor’s top AI recommendations for business leaders hoping to boost efficiency at their companies:

Matthew Sias: Founder, Innovation Acceleration

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a generative AI platform giving entrepreneurs access to the school’s array of startup resources. From crafting business plans to finding local startup events, MIT’s Orbit AI ranks as a powerful tool for student entrepreneurs and small business founders. Note that there’s currently a waitlist for interested parties unaffiliated with MIT.

Orbit’s curated suggestions are based on the 24-step “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” methodology, developed by MIT professor and three-time entrepreneur Bill Aulet. By plugging this groundbreaking program into a tailored AI platform, students and other early-stage startup founders can receive personalized guidance as they prepare to launch new ventures.

Anthropic’s large language model is, in Sias’ view, "a game-changer for ideation, automation and strategic planning.” Claude works similarly to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and is known for its nuanced answers to prompts and relatively strong ethical standards. Claude can integrate across various tools, “making it indispensable for AI-driven decision-making,” Sias said.

As with other large language models, businesspeople turn to Claude for basic content creation, code-writing expertise and brief summaries of extensive reports. Task automation is also one of Claude’s strong suits, with the potential to reduce the time business leaders and founders spend dealing with rudimentary tasks.

Sias enjoys using Capitol AI for research-heavy work since it seamlessly integrates advanced search with reasoning and citations. Capitol AI is generally applied by innovation leaders to create customizable content that’s ideal for use in business reports and corporate analyses.

With this platform, users can either pull from proprietary datasets or use information that’s freely available online. Capitol AI provides tremendous value to business executives and managers in immediate need of high-level business reports, making it a strong corporate AI tool.

OpenAI’s image and video-generation programs also make Sias’ list of AI tools for business leaders. DALL-E 3 ranks as a leading text-to-image tool since it’s capable of producing high-quality pictures from simple prompts. Perhaps even more impressive is Sora, which Sias says is “pushing the bounds of AI-generated video” as it crafts moving images based on user inputs.

DALL-E 3 and Sora rank as invaluable assets for small business leaders and startup founders searching for cost-effective marketing materials. The former tool can craft basic ad layouts and logo designs, while the second is capable of simple how-to videos and promotional clips.

Sylvie O’Connor: Head of customer success, Tembo

O’Connor often uses Perplexity AI as a Google replacement since it “generates concise responses,” allowing the Tembo team to work quickly. Other favored aspects of Perplexity are its prioritization of high-quality sources and the ease at which citations are available compared to when using AI tools like ChatGPT.

Users enjoy Perplexity’s transparency regarding sourcing, with the platform revealing where information came from unprompted. So, it’s simpler for businesspeople to fact-check Perplexity’s accuracy than with other AI tools, which is critical for entrepreneurs and business leaders trying to cultivate legitimacy for their companies.

Cursor has become an invaluable resource for O’Connor and the rest of Tembo’s team due to its ability to quickly and accurately write and edit code. According to O’Connor, Cursor has “changed the game for building faster by boosting code generation” to a level that was previously impossible.

Not every business owner will make use of Cursor, but it’s an asset to anyone searching for basic coding functions. While sophisticated code may require additional work, Cursor’s capabilities are likely to boost productivity for businesspeople hoping to complete simpler tasks.

According to O’Connor, Tembo’s team appreciates that Grok, an AI platform backed by Elon Musk, “integrates directly with X, which is where engineers like to communicate.” Others who regularly use Grok appreciate that it’s transitioning to an open-source AI model, similar to China’s DeepSeek but unlike Claude and ChatGPT.

Grok is known to give witty and sarcastic responses, adding lighthearted answers to mundane prompts. For this reason, it may not be appropriate for crafting external communications. As with nearly all large language models, though, Grok AI can answer business questions, provide inspiration for new marketing ideas and help to brainstorm basic forms of corporate content.

Featured image at top: Close-up image of an AI chip. Photo/Unsplash