Tuesday Sep 1
ENTERPRISEOther

A Third Of Firms Built Instead Of Buying

1SEP
ONLY 6% SEE ROINOT BOUGHTBUILT IT

SaaS budgets have a new competitor. McKinsey surveyed 1,719 leaders and found 32% skipped buying a software product because agentic coding tools let them build it instead. In tech companies it hit 41%.

The rest of the report is flatter. Only 37% report any earnings impact from AI, about the same as last year. Just 6% qualify as high performers.

Agent scaling is real at the top end. Large enterprises report moving agents into production faster than last year, and most AI users report personal productivity gains.

The build-versus-buy number is the one to watch. Every seat-priced tool now competes with a weekend of agent work. Read it before the next renewal cycle.

full brief & sources

⚡ Why this matters

  • This is the first big survey to put a number on agentic coding eating software purchases, not just developer hours.
  • It reframes AI's enterprise story: the measurable effect shows up in avoided spend, not in reported earnings.
  • At 41% in tech, the vendors most exposed are the ones selling to technical buyers.

🔍 What happened

  • McKinsey surveyed 1,719 professionals and business leaders globally, across industries, for its 2026 State of AI report.
  • 32% said their organization decided against buying one or more software products or features because they could build it internally with agentic coding tools.
  • In the technology sector that figure was 41%.
  • About 37% report any earnings impact from AI, roughly flat year over year.
  • Roughly 6% of organizations qualify as high performers on McKinsey's own scoring.
  • The report was covered from August 25 onward; the build-versus-buy cut surfaced in coverage on August 30.

💬 Smart takes

  • McKinsey: enterprise AI is finally on the road to ROI, even if the earnings line has not moved yet.
  • The Register: the ROI framing sits awkwardly next to a flat 37% earnings-impact number.
  • Retool's own 2026 survey: 35% of enterprises say they have already replaced a SaaS product with custom software.
  • Skeptic: "decided against buying" is a survey answer, not a cancelled contract. Deferred purchases often come back.

🧭 Where this goes

  1. Likelyseat-based SaaS pricing comes under explicit board scrutiny in the next planning cycle.
  2. Likelyvendors respond by shipping agent-buildable extensibility rather than cutting price.
  3. Possiblea mid-market SaaS company publicly attributes a churn miss to internal agent builds.
  4. Possiblethe 32% figure softens next year as internal builds hit maintenance cost.
  5. Wild Carda large enterprise announces it has replaced a named SaaS category entirely with in-house agent-built tools.

🥄 The Spoon Take

Ignore the ROI headline. The number that matters is 32%. Your product is no longer competing only with rivals; it is competing with a team that could build a rough version of it in a week. That does not kill software, but it does kill anything priced above the effort of rebuilding it.

🤔 Pushback

A survey of intentions, not invoices. Internal builds carry maintenance cost that shows up in year two, not in this year's answer.

·McKinsey - The State of AI·The Register - McKinsey says enterprise AI is on the road to ROI·Webindia - 32% build in-house instead of buying·TechTimes - Record AI spending, flat earnings impact