[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":96},["ShallowReactive",2],{"profile":3,"writing-what-your-ai-vendor-wont-tell-you":14},{"name":4,"role":5,"tagline":6,"location":7,"contact":8},"Sankar Vema","AI Builder & Architect of Agentic Systems","I help enterprise leaders turn AI ambition into capability that actually ships.","India · open to global advisory engagements",{"email":9,"linkedin":10,"github":11,"blog":12,"twitter":13},"sankar.vema@gmail.com","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.linkedin.com\u002Fin\u002Fsankarvema\u002F","http:\u002F\u002Fsankarvema.github.io\u002F","http:\u002F\u002Fsankarvema.blogspot.com\u002F","https:\u002F\u002Ftwitter.com\u002Fsansvema",{"id":15,"title":16,"body":17,"date":81,"description":23,"draft":82,"excerpt":83,"extension":84,"meta":85,"navigation":86,"path":87,"seo":88,"slug":89,"status":83,"stem":90,"tags":91,"__hash__":95},"writing\u002Fwriting\u002Fwhat-your-ai-vendor-wont-tell-you.md","What Your AI Vendor Will Not Tell You",{"type":18,"value":19,"toc":74},"minimark",[20,24,29,64,68,71],[21,22,23],"p",{},"Your AI vendor is not lying to you. They are just answering the questions you ask,\nand the important questions are the ones that do not come up in the demo. The demo\nis designed to impress. The contract, the cost curve, and the lock-in are where the\nreal story lives. Here are five things worth asking before you sign, because the\nvendor will not raise them first.",[25,26,28],"h2",{"id":27},"five-things-to-ask-about","Five things to ask about",[30,31,32,40,46,52,58],"ol",{},[33,34,35,39],"li",{},[36,37,38],"strong",{},"The cost at scale, not the cost of the pilot."," The pilot is cheap by design.\nAsk for the fully loaded cost per outcome at your real volume, including the model\ncalls a single user action triggers. Pilots are priced to get you in. Production\nis priced differently.",[33,41,42,45],{},[36,43,44],{},"What happens to your data."," Ask plainly: is our data used to train your models,\nis it isolated, can we get it back, and does your platform become the only place\nour accumulated data and evals live. If your moat ends up inside their system, that\nis the real price.",[33,47,48,51],{},[36,49,50],{},"How hard it is to leave."," Ask what it takes to switch models or vendors in\neighteen months. If the architecture ties you to their weights, their format, or\ntheir proprietary layer, you are not buying a tool, you are buying a dependency,\nand they know it.",[33,53,54,57],{},[36,55,56],{},"Who owns the accuracy."," When the model gets something wrong in production, whose\nproblem is it. Vendors happily own the demo and quietly disown the edge cases. Ask\nwhere their responsibility ends and yours begins, before it matters.",[33,59,60,63],{},[36,61,62],{},"Where the price goes next."," You do not control the per-unit price of the\nintelligence you are renting. Ask what has happened to their pricing, and what\nleverage you have if it moves against you. The margin you save today can be\nrepriced away tomorrow.",[25,65,67],{"id":66},"the-pattern","The pattern",[21,69,70],{},"Every one of these is about the same thing: who captures the value in three years.\nThe vendor's honest goal is to make themselves indispensable and your switching costs\nhigh. That is not villainy, it is strategy, and your job is to negotiate against it\nwith open eyes. Own your data, keep the model swappable, price on outcomes, and read\nthe exit clause as carefully as the feature list.",[21,72,73],{},"So before your next AI contract: which of these five did the vendor not bring up, and\nwhy do you think that is?",{"title":75,"searchDepth":76,"depth":76,"links":77},"",3,[78,80],{"id":27,"depth":79,"text":28},2,{"id":66,"depth":79,"text":67},"2026-08-01",false,null,"md",{},true,"\u002Fwriting\u002Fwhat-your-ai-vendor-wont-tell-you",{"title":16,"description":23},"what-your-ai-vendor-wont-tell-you","writing\u002Fwhat-your-ai-vendor-wont-tell-you",[92,93,94],"cxo","procurement","strategy","sdhf0YhdP8kiUCuE1j0TLpwdMJAiB7RnQjvLruiynAc",1790601541802]