AOT is 'Ahead of time'.
In Angular 4, View Engine introduced, which decreased the size of generated code using 'AOT'.
'AOT' is Angular compiler.
It's convert HTML and Typescript code into efficient JavaScript code during build Phase before browser download and run that code.
AOT compilation is on build time - For AOT compilation, need to Add --aot flag in command. i.e, ng build --aot