Builder Radar
A monthly brief on what AI products people are launching. Trends, emerging categories, and products worth watching.
If April was the month of everything, May narrowed to one thing: AI video and image generators poured in, the single largest category by a wide margin and far ahead of anything else. Almost all of them wrap the same few models. Underneath the noise, a handful of genuine infrastructure products shipped, and April's sudden finance-and-trading wave quietly disappeared.
147
Products spotted
AI video and image generation
Top trend
AI image and video generation swallowed the month
It was by far the largest category, more submissions than any other by a wide margin and a clear jump from its April share. The catch is sameness: most are thin landing pages over the same handful of models. Wan 2.6 and 2.7, Veo 4, Seedance, Vidu Q3, Z-Image, and music models like Lyria 3 show up again and again under different brand names. When the model is the product and anyone can call it, the landing page is the only thing that differs.
The finance and trading wave was a one-month blip
April had a sudden cluster of prop-firm comparators, trading-signal tools, and crypto/prediction-market projects. In May it collapsed to a few stray submissions. A reminder that a single month of a category showing up is a coincidence, not a trend, the pattern only means something if it persists.
Cheaper unified API gateways keep appearing
Another OpenAI-compatible aggregator shipped this month (Our Token), routing across multiple LLM providers on a cost pitch. This is now a recurring shape: take the major models, expose one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, compete on price and routing. OpenRouter has company, and the field keeps getting more crowded.
Inference is starting to be sold as 'not GPUs'
General Compute pitches an ASIC-powered inference cloud built for AI agents, explicitly positioned against GPUs on latency and per-user throughput. Alongside the usual GPU clouds (Packet.ai shipped a Blackwell cloud this month), the alternative-silicon angle is becoming a deliberate differentiator rather than a footnote.
Worth a look
New AI products and tools that caught our eye in May 2026
Packet.ai β
On-demand NVIDIA Blackwell GPU cloud with per-second billing and an OpenAI-compatible API
SSH and CLI access plus an OpenAI-compatible inference endpoint on current Blackwell hardware. Added to Infrabase.
General Compute β
ASIC-powered inference cloud built for AI agents, OpenAI-compatible
Runs inference on purpose-built silicon rather than GPUs, pitched on latency and per-user throughput for agentic and real-time apps. Added to Infrabase.
Samtal β
Swedish-hosted voice AI API: TTS, ASR, voice cloning, and conversational agents
ElevenLabs-compatible and EU-hosted, bundling the full voice stack (TTS, ASR, RAG, MCP, agents). Part of the continuing EU-sovereign infra thread. Added to Infrabase.
Our Token β
Unified OpenAI-compatible API gateway routing across multiple LLM providers
The latest entry in the cheaper-unified-gateway pattern, competing with OpenRouter on cost and routing. Added to Infrabase.
Prompt Optimizer β
Prompt engineering IDE with quality scoring, automated tuning, and model comparison
Treats prompts as version-controlled assets with native execution and side-by-side model comparison, prompt engineering as real tooling rather than a text box. Added to Infrabase.
Geodd β
Managed AI inference endpoints and GPU infrastructure with MLOps services
Managed endpoints plus model deployment and MLOps, OpenAI-compatible. Another option for teams that want inference infra without running it themselves. Added to Infrabase.
What people are building
Based on ~147 AI products spotted across directories and launch platforms in May 2026
We reviewed 184 AI product submissions this month, nearly four times the March count. Three made it into the Infrabase directory. The rest tell a story about where builder energy is going: image generators are the dominant category, tools for optimizing AI search visibility are emerging as a standalone product type, and finance/trading submissions came out of nowhere.
184
Products spotted
Image and video generation tools
Top trend
Image and video generation is the largest real category
23 submissions (13% of total), up from 8 in March. Most are thin wrappers around the same underlying models: Wan 2.7, Seedance, Sora. Face swap tools, anime generators, and AI video editors dominate. A few stand out for targeting specific verticals (Furnea for furniture photography, Outfit Check for fashion e-commerce), but the majority are generic "paste a prompt, get an image" products. Defensibility is low when everyone ships the same model.
GEO tools are going mainstream
Three separate submissions (GetMentions AI, Algomizer, Gofylo) explicitly sell "get your brand visible in AI search results" as their core product. The pitch: optimize for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews the way you used to optimize for Google organic. This is the first month we have seen generative engine optimization as a standalone product category rather than a feature. Whether these tools actually work is a different question, but the demand signal is real.
Finance and trading tools came out of nowhere
11 submissions, up from near zero in March. Split between prop-firm comparison platforms (PropFirmCorner, PipBack), trading signal tools (SignalBoss, TradingMMT), and crypto/prediction market infrastructure (PolyTest for Polymarket backtesting, zopik.fun combining bonding curves with prediction markets). The prop-firm comparators are particularly interesting as a pattern: multiple teams building the same niche comparison product independently.
Most submissions are consumer apps on hosted APIs
Consumer AI products (chatbots, writing tools, language learning) and marketing tools together account for 30 submissions. The common thread: a thin layer on top of OpenAI or Anthropic APIs. This was true in March too, but at 4x the volume the pattern is sharper. Builders are treating hosted AI APIs as commodity inputs. The interesting question remains defensibility, most of these could be replicated in a weekend.
Worth a look
New AI products and tools that caught our eye in May 2026
ARK Labs β
Sovereign AI inference infrastructure for regulated EU environments
Supports heterogeneous GPU fleets (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel) without requiring NVLink or InfiniBand. OpenAI-compatible API with EU data residency. Added to Infrabase.
Rhesis AI β
Open-source testing platform for LLM and agentic applications
Goes beyond eval scoring to a full QA workflow: generate tests from requirements, red-team with adversarial agents, trace failures across multi-agent flows. MIT-licensed. Added to Infrabase.
Theta EdgeCloud β
Decentralized GPU cloud combining traditional and edge compute
Partnerships with Google Cloud and AWS for GPU supply alongside community-run edge nodes. The first decentralized GPU provider in the Infrabase directory. Added to Infrabase.
Credyt β
Real-time usage billing for AI products (tokens, API calls, compute)
Signals that AI-native billing is becoming its own product category. Charges $1/active wallet/month, not a revenue percentage. Targets teams that shipped AI features fast and now need to monetize usage.
Glasscribe β
macOS menu bar app for on-device real-time transcription in 22+ languages
Part of a growing pattern: local, always-on transcription tools built on on-device models. No cloud dependency, no subscription. The on-device AI wave is real for audio.
Extralt β
E-commerce scraping with AI-generated crawlers compiled to Rust
Uses AI once to generate each crawler, then runs native compiled code. Interesting technical approach: AI as a build step rather than a runtime dependency.
What people are building
Based on ~184 AI products spotted across directories and launch platforms in May 2026
We reviewed around 50 AI products launched this month. Five of them answer phone calls. Three track your health. And at least one was actually a locksmith. Here is what the data looks like when you filter out the noise.
50
Products spotted
Voice AI agents
Top trend
Voice AI is the category to watch
Five voice AI products in one month, three of which are specifically AI receptionists for small businesses. Most are building on ElevenLabs or Vapi (both listed on Infrabase). The repeating pitch: AI answers your business phone calls 24/7 so you don't have to hire for it. When three unrelated teams independently build the same thing, that's demand.
The majority of launches are consumer apps built on hosted APIs
Writing assistants, image generators, video editors, marketing automation. The common thread: a thin layer on top of OpenAI or Anthropic's API. Builders are treating hosted AI APIs as a commodity input, which is exactly what happens when infrastructure pricing drops and tooling improves. The interesting question is defensibility. Most of these products could be replicated in a weekend.
Health AI is emerging
Three health-related products: migraine tracking with weather-based trigger prediction, cholesterol monitoring via meal photos, and a mood tracker. These combine computer vision, LLMs, and external data sources. Health is a category where AI might deliver real value and where regulatory requirements create natural moats. Worth watching if it persists.
The noise floor
Of the ~50 products we spotted, roughly 10-15% were spam or non-AI businesses chasing backlinks: a painting company, a removals service, a hair salon, a locksmith. One product submitted four times in a single week. The barrier to launching something with "AI" in the name has never been lower, which makes filtering for signal harder but also more valuable.
Worth a look
New AI products and tools that caught our eye in March 2026
CodingPlanX β
Unified API gateway for 600+ AI models
Claims 80% cheaper than direct provider pricing. Taking on OpenRouter with aggressive positioning and support for Cursor, Cline, and Claude Code.
CallCow AI β
AI phone agent that answers business calls and captures leads
Representative of the AI receptionist wave. Collects lead info, generates summaries, integrates with CRMs. Built for businesses that can't staff phones 24/7.
Preuve AI β
AI-powered legal document analysis
Submitted 4 times in one week. Beyond the aggressive growth playbook, legal doc analysis is one of the more defensible LLM use cases due to domain complexity.
PrivateClawd β
Self-hosted AI agent deployment platform
Targets the growing demand for running AI agents on your own infrastructure. Relevant as enterprises push back on sending data to third-party APIs.
Voxumi β
TTS platform with visual speech editor and 500+ voices in 100+ languages
Part of the voice AI wave but consumer-facing, not infrastructure. Shows how TTS tech is being productized for creators and educators.
Migraine Trail β
AI migraine tracker with weather-based trigger prediction and voice logging
Representative of the health AI niche. Combines speech-to-text, weather APIs, and pattern recognition. Specific enough to be useful, which is more than most AI health apps.
What people are building
Based on ~50 AI products spotted across directories and launch platforms in March 2026
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