Imagine an insurance company testing two AI assistants. Both understand customer questions, respond naturally and perform well in demonstrations. Six months later, one handles policy renewals inside the insurer’s systems, follows approval rules and escalates exceptions to employees. The other remains a tool people occasionally open.
A better model could arrive tomorrow, but replacing the first assistant would require changing how the company operates. That is where I believe an important AI moat is developing: inside customer workflows.
Recent acquisitions and partnerships illustrate three implications for founders, investors and boards.
Workflow access creates strategic value
Schneider Electric’s agreement to acquire PTC for approximately $22.6 billion in equity value gives it software used to design, manufacture and service physical products, placing it inside customer decisions throughout a product’s lifecycle.
Meanwhile, the Synopsys–OpenAI partnership illustrates a similar logic: Combining frontier AI with established chip-design tools and expertise, supported by licensing and revenue sharing.
My reading is that these transactions highlight the strategic value of owning the environment in which AI performs useful work. Companies already embedded in complex industries bring customer relationships, domain expertise and trusted processes that AI developers need to commercialize their technology.
For founders, that suggests building a position inside a specific customer workflow. For established businesses, it creates an opportunity to turn existing workflow access into bargaining power.
Completing recurring work builds defensibility
ElevenLabs reported that its agents handle more than 15 million conversations weekly, including refunds, insurance renewals and healthcare bookings, alongside announcing an employee tender at a $22 billion valuation. The operational adoption is particularly relevant to the moat discussion. Once a product connects to internal systems, follows permissions, handles exceptions and reliably completes tasks, replacing it involves migration, testing, retraining and operational risk.
This can strengthen retention and create opportunities to serve additional workflows. Integration alone offers limited protection, however. Customers need to depend on the product and measure the value it delivers. Investors should therefore examine how much recurring work flows through the platform, which processes rely on it, and what switching would actually require.
Companies can acquire their way into workflows
ServiceNow’s acquisition of Moveworks combines an AI assistant and enterprise search technology with established workflow automation. At completion, Moveworks had 5.5 million employee users, with approximately 250 customers already using both companies’ technologies.
The strategic opportunity is to connect employee requests directly to the systems and processes that resolve them across IT, HR and other functions. This creates a clear corp dev agenda: identify the customer workflows the company wants to enter, understand the barriers, and assess whether an acquisition or partnership can accelerate entry.
An attractive target may bring technology, customer relationships, integrations and an established role in daily operations.
Diligence should test how deeply customers depend on the product, whether those relationships will survive the transaction and whether the combined offering can deliver measurable improvements. As AI capabilities improve, acquiring the right position inside customer operations could become a powerful route to durable growth.
Itay Sagie is a strategic adviser to tech companies, investors, CEOs and boards, specializing in strategy, growth and M&A. He is a guest contributor to Crunchbase News and a university lecturer on strategy, finance and entrepreneurship. Learn more at SagieCapital.com and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
