McKinsey's newly released State of AI 2026 global survey found that 32% of organizations have decided against buying an off-the-shelf software product or feature in the past year — choosing instead to build it themselves with agentic coding tools. In the tech industry specifically, that number climbs to 41%. For agencies and independent builders who make a living helping businesses adopt software, this is the trend to understand right now, not next quarter.
McKinsey's survey is one of the most closely watched benchmarks in enterprise AI adoption, and this year's build-vs-buy finding stands out from the usual productivity-and-ROI headlines. A few data points make the shift concrete:
That last figure matters most: this isn't a handful of engineers experimenting in a sandbox. It's a structural shift in how companies allocate budget between procurement and internal engineering.
The build-vs-buy decision used to hinge almost entirely on speed and headcount. A custom tool took months and a dedicated team; a SaaS subscription took an afternoon and a credit card. Agentic coding tools have compressed that gap. A well-scoped internal dashboard, workflow automation, or integration layer that once required a multi-sprint roadmap can now go from spec to working prototype in days, with an AI agent handling the scaffolding, boilerplate, and first-pass testing.
That changes the calculation in three concrete ways:
Customization no longer costs a premium. Off-the-shelf tools win when they fit a company's workflow closely enough that the gap isn't worth building around. Agentic coding narrows that gap — a business can now get software shaped exactly to its process without paying custom-development rates.
Vendor lock-in becomes a bigger relative cost. When building takes months, recurring SaaS fees look cheap by comparison. When building takes days, the ongoing per-seat cost of a rigid platform starts to look like the more expensive option over a two- or three-year horizon.
Iteration speed favors the builder. SaaS product roadmaps move on the vendor's timeline. An internally built tool, maintained with agentic coding support, can be reshaped the same week a business process changes.
McKinsey's own numbers include a caution flag worth taking seriously: 20% of organizations report they're already feeling the pinch of rising AI operating costs. Building software isn't free just because an agent writes the first draft — someone still has to review the output, own the security posture, handle edge cases, and maintain it after the agent moves on to the next task. Complex, compliance-heavy systems (payments, identity, core infrastructure) remain places where a mature vendor's accumulated hardening is worth paying for.
The realistic read isn't "buying is dead." It's that the build option has become viable for a much wider range of internal tools than it was two years ago — narrow workflow apps, internal dashboards, custom integrations, and process automation that previously would have defaulted to a SaaS subscription almost by default.
This is the part of the story that matters most for HadidizFlow's world. The build-vs-buy shift isn't a threat to agencies and automation builders — it's a repositioning opportunity, and the businesses moving fastest are the ones that will need a partner to do it well.
A few practical implications:
RAG assistants on your documents, AI agents that act in your tools, and LLM features inside your product.
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