August AI Insights
What the exec team should be reading this month.
August was quieter in the headlines and louder in the boardrooms. A few patterns worth noting for the executive team.
Procurement is becoming the first serious AI governance function in many companies. Not legal, not IT, not the CAIO — procurement. Because they are the ones signing the contracts, and the contracts are where the hard questions (data residency, model updates, exit rights, liability) actually get answered or dodged.
The "build vs. buy" debate quietly shifted to "buy vs. rent vs. host". Hosting your own model is no longer the exotic option it was in 2024. For regulated industries, especially in Switzerland, it is becoming the default for anything that touches client data.
Internal AI usage is outpacing internal AI policy by a wide margin. In most organisations we see, employees are already using tools the company has not approved, on data the company has not classified. Catching up requires a different posture than blocking — the horse has left the barn.
None of this is a crisis. All of it is a backlog.
What to watch: the executive teams reading contracts and shadow-IT reports this month are better prepared than the ones reading model benchmarks.