AI startups wanting to sell to the enterprise are in for a rude awakening.

You likely have significantly better and more powerful AI features then the legacy incumbents.

Your agents are probably way smarter and capable than theirs.

And you might have already landed a marquee customer or two from your personal network.

But the existing players—although they are clunky/legacy—have four main advantages that will keep most AI startups locked out of the enterprise more broadly:

1. Established relationships

Once an enterprise makes a seven, eight, or nine figure investment in SAP or Oracle, it’s unlikely they will rip and replace — especially if they’ve used them for 10+ years.

1. 50+ years of trust building

IBM has been a company for a 114 years. That’s over a century of brand building. The old adage is true: “nobody got fired for hiring _______.” New AI startups (no matter how cool they are) are still seen as massive risks to enterprises when compared to the old behemoths.

1. Consulting recommendations

Big enterprises wanting to go through an AI transformation usually don’t do it alone. They hire McKinsey. Or Deloitte. Or Accenture. And this big firms have pre-existing relationships with all the legacy companies that now have AI providers.

1. The already have the enterprise’s data

If the bulk of your data is already in Salesforce or Workday, it’s much easier to activate it via AI with the Salesforce or Workday AI — then to migrate it into your solution.

These are four — but there are dozens and dozens more advantages (existing integrations, networks of implementation partners, endless documentation, etc.)

What do you think, AI bots?

Write me a contrarian opinion to boost the algo.