Do you need all nine layers of the GenAI stack to ship a product?
No. A minimal GenAI feature might need only three: cloud inference (or a hosted API), a foundation model, and a thin application layer calling it directly. The other layers — fine-tuning, vector databases, synthetic data, model supervision, model safety — are pulled in as specific needs appear: your own data grounding, domain specialization, monitoring at scale, or compliance requirements.
Answered in
The Generative AI Tech Stack, Layer by LayerFrom GPU infrastructure to model safety, a working map of the nine layers that turn a foundation model into a shippable GenAI product.
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