Depending on one AI vendor
It is convenient to buy all your AI from one supplier: one contract, one interface, one support line. It is also a quiet way of handing control of your company's future to someone else's product plans.
How the dependency builds
It starts with the model. Then the tools built around it. Then the data, stored in the vendor's format. Then the business processes, configured in the vendor's platform. Then the controls, the records of what the systems did, kept on the vendor's servers. At each step the convenience grows, and so does the cost of leaving.
Prices for AI models are falling today. They will not fall forever. A supplier who knows you cannot leave will price accordingly, change terms, or discontinue the product you depend on, and you will adapt to their decisions rather than make your own.
What to keep in your own hands
The ability to use at least two different model families, so that switching is a configuration change rather than a project. The logic of your processes: the rules, the steps, the instructions your systems follow, written down in a form you own and can move. The data your systems learn from, including the corrections your people make. And the records of what your systems did, stored where you control them.
The test is simple: could you replace your current model with another one next month, and keep everything your company has learned? If the answer is no, the learning belongs to the vendor.
Buying is fine, depending is not
None of this means building everything yourself. Buy what saves time. Just make sure the parts that make your company yours, its rules, its data, its history, can leave with you.