Enterprise hits and misses - who pays for agentic AI, and "Frugal AI" makes its case

Derek made waves with a masterful think piece on agentic AI costs/benefits/disruptions.

I got implicated in this piece, via a LinkedIn skirmish - I'll get to that. But the most important point in Derek's piece is: customers aren't ready. And in kind of a profound way. Derek:

When vendors pitch a beautiful agentic architecture, who writes the check?

Here's the problem Derek sees: when it comes to the investment side, core aspects of a future agentic architecture are fragmented.

• Data platforms typically report to the Chief Data Officer or CIO, funded from analytics budgets. Teams are measured on data quality, insights delivered, and cost efficiency. They don't own user-facing experiences and struggle to justify spend on "infrastructure that enables other teams."
• Transactional applications are owned by departmental buyers - sales operations for Salesforce, finance for ERP, HR for Workday. These teams control their own budgets ...