Goldman Sachs estimates 75% of companies overestimate the capabilities of AI being sold to them. 56% of AI POCs never reach production. AI due diligence is the skill that distinguishes procurement teams and investors who capture value from those who burn their budget.
Model architecture, training dataset, independent benchmarks, real latency on your workloads, scalability, SLA. Request: sandbox access for real testing.
Where does your data go? SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR compliance (DPA, EU data location). On-premise available? Single-tenant vs multi-tenant?
System classification? Technical documentation available? AI register maintained? Audit trail for automated decisions?
TCO over 36 months. Pricing mechanism and vendor lock-in risk. ROI modelled on real use cases at comparable clients.
Change management planned? User training included? French/Dutch support for Belgium? Roadmap shared? Vendor financial stability? Exit strategy?
"Our AI achieves 95% accuracy", on what dataset? Compared to what? At what confidence threshold? Demand reproducible benchmarks on your own data, not marketing figures.
A vendor refusing contactable customer references or whose "clients" are all anonymised is hiding something. Minimum 3 clients in your sector, similar size, directly contactable.
Multi-year contracts without termination clauses, non-exportable data, non-transferable fine-tuned models = a trap. Negotiate: data portability within 30 days, shared fine-tuning IP, for-cause termination clause.
A vendor who will "handle compliance later" for a high-risk system exposes you directly. Deployer liability is distinct from provider liability. Demand full technical documentation before signing.
Molderez Consult SRL co-builds your 18-month AI roadmap.
AI strategy workshop