Business & Strategy · beginner · concept 297 of 311 · Updated Nov 4, 2026
Build, Buy or Partner
Build, buy or partner is the choice between developing an AI capability in-house, licensing a vendor product, or using an outside firm. MIT Sloan frames it as buy, boost or build: a ready-made tool, a vendor model boosted with your own data, or a system you create and run. It turns on how core the capability is, data sensitivity and talent. Menlo Ventures' 2025 survey of 495 US enterprises found 76 percent of AI use cases were bought, not built.
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Where you meet it in the real world
Choosing a SaaS copilot over a custom chatbot, fine-tuning a vendor model on company documents, partnering with a consultancy for a first deployment, building in-house when the model is the product
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AWS Events · YouTube
MIT Sloan Executive Education · YouTube
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