As an algorithm developer and manager I have thought of business ideas similar to what Algorithmia is pursuing. There are a few reasons why I think “algorithms as a service” will not work so well. In most products / services that rely on non-trivial algorithms, the core algorithms are often the “secret sauce” of the business. They are what gives you your edge over your competition. And you need to fully understand and control your secret sauce. You need to know where the core algorithms work well and where they don’t work so well. With an outsourced service, your core algorithms are basically a black box outside your control. Another problem: for most real world algorithms it is pretty rare to be able to take an off the shelf algorithm and have it “just work” well enough for your problem. Often there is a bit of parameter tuning and domain specific knowledge that must be incorporated to get the best results (this is how people like myself get a lot of consulting work). If a generic algorithm does work quite well for your problem, your competitors probably already know about it and you have no real edge over them. A third problem, and this is really the main one: one of the main benefits of developing an advanced algorithm is that once you have it, you “own” it and can deploy it as you see fit. You amortize your costs upfront and are able to use this sunk development cost over and over again without extra cost. But with a service like Algorithmia, you are never able to take full advantage of the tremendous leverage that algorithms can give you. The more you use the algorithms, the more you pay. And if you start paying a lot to use an algorithm you’re going to at some point find it to be better to develop your own implementation and stop paying someone else for the service.