Previously, building bespoke software for niche internal problems was too expensive. AI agents dramatically lower this cost, allowing companies to create custom-fit solutions for 99% of their problems, ending the era of contorting workflows to fit generic, off-the-shelf tools.

Goldman's CIO notes AI has dramatically reduced the cost and time to create internal applications. This is causing a strategic shift back toward building software in-house, especially for smaller tools, leading to the termination of some third-party vendor contracts.

AI is enabling a 700-person bank to develop custom solutions and better prepare for client meetings, closing the technology gap with financial giants. This shift allows smaller, more agile firms to offer bespoke services and compete on a more equal footing in a market dominated by large incumbents.

An internal agent, deeply integrated with proprietary company data and systems, can become superior to expensive, market-leading SaaS products. Replit cancelled a seven-figure contract because their custom, integrated solution was better and more adopted by employees, fundamentally changing the 'build vs. buy' calculation.

Wilkinson’s CFO, with no prior coding experience, used AI tools to build a sophisticated, customized portfolio management dashboard. This replaced Adapar, a service costing up to $100k annually, demonstrating how AI empowers non-engineers to build complex internal tools and disrupt expensive enterprise software.

For decades, buying generalized SaaS was more efficient than building custom software. AI coding agents reverse this. Now, companies can build hyper-specific, more effective tools internally for less cost than a bloated SaaS subscription, because they only need to solve their unique problem.

Enterprises are empowering non-technical employees to build bespoke internal tools with AI, replacing expensive SaaS products. This saves hundreds of thousands of dollars and creates solutions perfectly tailored to specific workflows, freeing them from the constraints of third-party roadmaps.

Chamath notes that $4T of the $5T software market is services and maintenance. Elite tech companies avoid this by building custom software. AI now democratizes this capability, allowing mainstream companies to build bespoke solutions and escape the inefficient off-the-shelf software trap.

Nimble small and medium-sized businesses will increasingly use AI to build custom internal tools, especially for CRM. They will opt to create the 20% of features they actually need, rather than pay for complex, expensive enterprise software where they ignore 80% of the functionality.