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System integrators: your best people keep rebuilding the same thing for the next client. There's a better way.

System integrators: You've been trying to build recurring revenue for years. AI is finally how you get there.

System integrators: AI projects are everywhere, but the people to deliver them aren't. Turn delivery into software, not hires.

Can system integrators make lemonade out of AI? Right now AI feels like a box of lemons handed to every implementation firm. The board wants to know what you're doing about it. Your clients say they want AI too, but ask them what they actually want to build and most of them go quiet. 🍋 The sour part: Clients have AI budgets they're ready to spend now, but most firms struggle to scope what to build and move fast enough to capture it. So the budget goes to whoever moves first, an AI-native shop, a consultant, a tool the client found themselves. The budget leaves, and so does the account. And it's harder than it looks. One partner said the hard part isn't the AI, it's that their clients' data isn't in shape to build on. Another has a long queue of client requests they'll never get to. 🍸 The opportunity: The firms I'm most optimistic about stopped trying to "do AI" and changed what they sell. Instead of billing once to build something and walking away, they build it, they run it, and the client pays every month. Investors have pushed them toward recurring revenue for years, and this is finally how they get there. What makes that possible is software that takes on the repeatable work: discovery, scoping, the first working version. Not to replace the people, but so a small team delivers what used to take a big one, with everything they know about each client in one collaborative place. This is the part the new AI-native shops can't copy. These firms know their clients' world. They earned the trusted-advisor seat over years. The software is just a leverage on top of it. So there's lemonade here. It goes to the firms that stop billing for their time and start charging for what they know.

Forward deployed engineering is becoming software, and the platforms that productize it first write the AI story everyone else reads.

There is 1 FDE for every 4 million people on the planet. The US has more neurosurgeons than engineers who can actually deliver enterprise AI ROI. There are only 2,000 elite FDEs today. At the start of 2026, only 5-10% of companies were planning to hire FDEs. By the end of Q2, that number jumped to 70%. Demand is projected to surge 2,100% by the end of 2026. Can a mid-size SaaS platform compete for this talent against OpenAI and Salesforce? And even if they could, can they afford it? 5 FDEs per AI delivery project at $385K median total comp is nearly $2M a year in salaries alone. This is the FDE paradox. Every enterprise AI project needs them. Almost nobody can hire them. The SaaS platforms that will win AI transformation budgets will be the ones that figure out how to need fewer of them, while turning chunks of the FDE work into a software. Think about it this way: an AI offering that can act as an FDE squad - mapping processes, scoping automations, building custom AI solutions. All as part of new software capabilities. One that scales with every new customer instead of requiring a new hire for each one. The FDE isn't going away. But with these AI capabilities, the FDE shifts from builder to orchestrator. SaaS platforms that productize their expertise will be the ones that own AI transformation in their domain. Not the ones competing for a talent pool of 2,000. P.S. if you're interested to hear more about how to launch an FDE as a Service as part of your product offering, let's continue the conversation here: https://lnkd.in/dMs_faPs