Every THE D[AI]LY BRIEF article on build vs buy — enterprise AI analysis, benchmarks, vendor comparisons, and ROI frameworks for technology and business leaders. Updated as new coverage publishes.
Anthropic's new FDE residency is a build vs buy decision. A checklist for evaluating a nomination against hiring or an integrator, and the three terms to get in writing first.
October 2, 2026 · 9 min read
At 10,000 users, Postgres with pgvector costs $163-$332 a month against Zep's $375-$750 and Letta's $1,020 — and no independent party has confirmed that a commercial memory store retrieves better. Buy one when you can name the column you could not write yourself.
September 19, 2026 · 17 min read
McKinsey's 2026 survey found 32% of organizations skipped a software purchase because agentic coding tools could build it in-house — while the share reporting any EBIT impact from AI stayed flat at 37%. The industry spread explains why: insurance and the public sector, at 19% and 17%, buy audit evidence and liability, not code.
August 31, 2026 · 11 min read
In two weeks, Asana bought StackAI for $75M, Salesforce signed to acquire Contentful for $1–1.5B, Coupa acquired Rossum, Vertice acquired Vendr, and Palo Alto Networks closed the Portkey acquisition. Five deals across five different software categories targeting the same gap: the execution layer that lets AI agents do real work inside the enterprise. This article maps the emerging five-layer enterprise AI agent stack and provides two frameworks for CIOs deciding whether to build, buy, or partner.
June 9, 2026 · 16 min read