Why Everyone Is Building the HVAC Chatbot

Five AI-native startups and every major field-service platform are racing to build the same product: an AI assistant that sits in a technician's pocket and answers questions about the air conditioner in front of them. The technicians are a proxy. The real contest is whether a thin AI layer on an underserved dataset can survive once the platform that already owns the customer relationship copies the feature for free. HVAC is the smallest, clearest test of a question every vertical AI founder is asking: does depth beat distribution?