Inside the Room · Interview
Build, Buy, or Partner: How We Made the AI Platform Decision
Veridian's CTO on the trade-offs behind one of the most consequential calls a technology leader makes today.
The challenge
Veridian had to decide whether to build its own AI platform, buy one, or partner. The wrong choice would lock in cost and constraint for years.
The decision
David Chen chose to buy the foundational infrastructure and build a thin layer of proprietary orchestration and evaluation on top.
Why the decision was made
"Our differentiation was never going to be the model," Chen says. "It was going to be how well we evaluated and governed what the models did. So that is the part we built."
What did not work
An initial plan to build the vector infrastructure in-house consumed a quarter before Chen pulled it. "We were rebuilding a commodity. That is engineering ego, not strategy."
Lessons learned
The build/buy line should follow differentiation, not familiarity. Teams naturally want to build what they understand, which is rarely where the advantage lies.
“Our differentiation was never going to be the model. It was how well we evaluated and governed what the models did. So that is the part we built.”David Chen — CTO, Veridian Software
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