Why AI needs a broker

There are over 100,000 AI vendors. Doubled from 2 years ago. Easily more than half are no better than cold demos and not worth your time. In some ways it’s like the early days of the web. And yet, mature AI already exists in specific domains and pockets, and vendors ready for primetime deliver on AI’s promises. Some businesses — including some that look just like yours — are already working with a futuristic set of capabilities. Different speed. Different internal economics. And the distance between them and everyone else is growing every month.

Everybody knows something about what AI can do. Maybe you have bought a useful AI tool or point solution already. You know your employees are uploading docs to ChatGPT whether it’s sanctioned or not. Maybe you have Microsoft Copilot doing something for you. Maybe you’re just starting to consider taking a leap. That’s not the divide. The divide is whether AI has become useful and real today inside your business.

Picture two 80-person law firms in the same city. Same types of clients, same caliber attorneys, same billing rates. One has proper AI governance, plumbing and security. On top of that basic stack, they have AI handling intake and onboarding, making institutional knowledge accessible to any associate and paralegal in seconds, shaving 75% off all contract review time, making partners much more productive, and taking case management load off everyone. The other is proud of doing things the way they’ve always done. From the outside, both firms look identical. But one of them has a massive structural advantage that changes their unit economics that the other doesn’t even know about yet. And it’s a devastating, compounding advantage.

Most technologies become easier to buy and sell as they mature — through common knowledge, standardization, and consolidation. AI is nowhere near there yet. Most companies need an AI SME they don’t have to safely figure out what to buy in order to solve simple low-hanging problems. To put together a strategic roadmap and AI program, it takes a lot more. Very few companies can afford to hire McKinsey. And yet this work is critically important because AI is moving so fast. If you have not implemented the correct AI stack for your specific business and priorities in 24 months, chances are life will become considerably more difficult because others will have.

Why do you need an AI advisor who isn’t just a salesperson under any name? One reason is the very nature of AI. Among technologies that every business needs, there is no fair comparison. AI is not bandwidth or a phone system. The promise is not that AI does one thing better/cheaper/faster. The promise is that AI improves how you work today, and tomorrow, it transforms what your work even looks like. If you succeed, it dramatically improves your internal economics.

The demos are easy. The buying decision is very hard, if you don’t want to make consequential and potentially irreversible mistakes. It is our job to step into that breach.

Finding a tool is easy. Just ask a chatbot. The hard part is knowing whether that tool fits your problem, what it can realistically deliver in your specific case, whether it will hold up under real use over any length of time, who picks up the phone when it stops working or causes harm, and whether the provider will be around in 18 months. That is the bottleneck. Not access. Understanding and judgment.

The internet took almost 20 years to fully change how businesses operate. AI is moving much faster — adoption, vendor activity, buyer pressure, everything is happening at once and accelerating. The market is still early and mostly immature, which means companies that get in now and have access to the right guidance are building an advantage that compounds. But that window won’t stay open forever.

Why the old channel model is not enough by itself

Today most B2B tech spend goes through technology services distributors (TSD). You don’t call the vendor directly and get assigned to a bag-carrying salesperson. A six-digit number of TAs (trusted advisors) act as brokers. Large distributors have comparison tools that track hundreds of vendors and thousands of features in real time — serious, well-funded infrastructure backed by PE money. That whole enterprise exists because complexity became too high for buyers to go it alone for legacy technology. For AI, the problem is far more pronounced. And yet, the vast majority of raw AI demand does not have suppliers in the channel for a number of structural reasons.

That’s why we have decided to offer the best of both worlds to clients. We’ve built a deep bench of hand-picked best-in-class vendors. This makes Innovendis an AI-only specialist TSD, and we round out the offering by also providing easy access to channel AI vendors through Cloud Taskforce.

In the end, to successfully navigate your AI journey and end up on the right side of the divide, you need two things.

First: someone who understands your business pain and can help you distill it from a vague “the COO wants AI” to a clear AI-shaped problem definition that we know has mature vendor fit. One problem that, if you fixed it, would show up on your P&L unmistakably within 90 days. Not a vendor with a quota, nor a salesperson, nor someone who only knows one or two products. A partner who can help figure out what really matters to you and provide the translation layer.

Second: someone with access to the whole landscape and provide you with a privileged vantage point. Not some products within arm’s reach — the entire market. Someone who can match your real problem the right tool, platform, or service, get you fair terms and pricing, keep the vendors honest, watch over the implementation, and make sure it’s still working six months later.