Meanings
- figurativelypluralplural onlyThe crucial tools or ingredients for a booming industry or enterprise.
They’re sort of a classic picks and shovels company that is making money by building the inputs to AI, but not actually training their own frontier models.
2025 June 13, Kevin Roose, Casey Newton, “Meta Bets on Scale + Apple’s A.I. Struggles + Listeners on Job Automation”, in The New York Times, →ISSN1 more example
By offering advanced AI capabilities, bridging proprietary and public models, providing secure storage solutions and delivering generative AI services, these providers of "picks and shovels" stand to play instrumental roles in shaping the future of enterprise AI.
2023 June 26, Steven Dickens, “The Picks And Shovels Of The AI Gold Rush”, in Forbes, archived from the original on 27 Jun 2023
Origin
From the expression “When everybody is digging for gold, it's good to be in the pick and shovel business” or a variation thereof.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
picks and shovels. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/picks%20and%20shovels
“picks and shovels.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/picks%20and%20shovels. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “picks and shovels,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/picks%20and%20shovels.
Source: picks and shovels on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.