For as long as companies have invested in technology, the same question has echoed through boardrooms and strategy decks: Should we build it ourselves, or buy it?
In the world of enterprise AI implementation, that question has taken on new urgency. AI adoption has surged to 78% of organizations in 2024, up from 55% just a year earlier. Models evolve monthly, not yearly. Market expectations shift with every breakthrough. What used to be a five-year roadmap is now a moving target that changes by the quarter.
That's why more and more forward-thinking organizations are embracing a new principle: Buy before you build.
Because in this new era, speed isn't just an advantage , it's a superpower.
Perfection used to be the goal. Enterprises would spend years architecting bespoke platforms, fine-tuning data pipelines, and building from scratch in the name of control.
But the world has changed. The pace of AI innovation means that by the time you finish building, the technology you started with is already outdated. Nearly three-quarters of organizations reported their most advanced AI initiatives met or exceeded ROI expectations in 2024, yet roughly 97% of enterprises still struggled to demonstrate business value from early generative AI efforts.
Today, the real differentiator isn't how much you build , it's how quickly you deliver value. A recent BCG study found that digital leaders bring products to market 40% faster and generate twice as many breakthrough innovations as their peers. Speed compounds into innovation, and innovation compounds into advantage.
In short: the faster you can get from idea to impact, the more resilient your business becomes.
While executives are highly optimistic about the future business impact of AI, 42% say the process of adopting generative AI is tearing their company apart. Most enterprises are still facing challenges with organizational alignment and adoption.
The numbers tell a stark story:
The smartest organizations have stopped treating "buy versus build" as a binary choice. They treat it as a composition strategy , a balance between proven platforms and proprietary differentiation.
Their rule of thumb is simple:
This mindset flips digital transformation on its head. Instead of reinventing the wheel, teams focus on what truly sets them apart , their data, insights, creativity, and people , while relying on robust platforms to handle the complexity underneath.
Enterprises making large, strategic investments are outperforming peers. There's a 40 percentage-point gap in success rates between companies that invest the most in AI and those that invest the least.
78% of enterprises plan to increase AI spend in 2025, but the question isn't just how much to invest , it's where to invest for maximum speed to value.
AI doesn't reward those who go slow and cautious; it rewards those who learn and adapt fastest.
Building from scratch may sound empowering, but it often leads to months of data wrangling, governance reviews, model tuning, and integration debt , all before a single insight reaches your teams.
By contrast, buying an enterprise-ready AI layer like Jigso means your organization can activate intelligence from day one. You connect your systems, and immediately, your data begins to speak: insights surface, patterns emerge, and teams move with confidence.
That's the difference between experimenting with AI and operationalizing it.
Reported adoption by consumers and employees of AI reached 40% in 2024 whereas when measured at the firm-level, nine out of ten businesses in the US report not using AI. This gap reveals the challenge: individual enthusiasm doesn't automatically translate to enterprise success.
Approximately 85% of enterprises are expected to implement AI agents by the end of 2025, but the winners will be those who move fastest with proven solutions rather than building from scratch.
In 2025, transformation isn't about owning every piece of technology. It's about orchestrating it , aligning best-in-class tools into one intelligent, responsive ecosystem.
AI is no longer an experiment for most businesses; with 78% of enterprises already using it, it's part of how companies run. The rapid adoption shows organizations are past the testing phase and are scaling AI into everyday operations.
The winners will be those who recognize that speed to value is the new measure of maturity, and agility is the new architecture.
92% of companies are planning to increase their AI investment in the next three years, but success won't come from building everything in-house. It will come from:
Buy before you build. Move before the market does.
Because in the age of AI, being first to learn is being first to lead.
The organizations that will thrive in 2025 and beyond aren't those with the most sophisticated homegrown AI infrastructure, they're the ones that can rapidly compose, deploy, and iterate with the best available tools while focusing their unique capabilities on what truly differentiates them in the market.
