Vercel ships Next.js, which means most AI web products ship on Vercel's infrastructure whether we plan it or not.
AI SDK (formerly Vercel AI SDK): the library that made streaming LLM responses into React boring. useChat, streamText, tool calling, structured outputs with zod schemas. It handles the messy bits — SSE parsing, backpressure, partial JSON — so you don't.
Next.js 15+ with the App Router: the canonical shape for AI apps in 2026. Server actions for mutation, edge runtimes for speed, ISR for docs.
Vercel AI Gateway: unified access to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek with one API key and usage analytics. Similar to OpenRouter but tighter with Next.
Where it shines: prototyping and shipping AI-first web apps fast. Where it struggles: heavy GPU workloads — you're calling APIs, not running models.
Pricing reality: the free tier is generous for prototypes; production bills scale with usage. Budget for it explicitly — AI features on Vercel can rack up $500/month quickly without caching.
Strategy: for sheer speed to product, nothing beats Next + AI SDK + Vercel. For self-hosting or model control, layer in Ollama behind your own API.