Your AI foundation must extend without surrendering control

The article argues that CIOs should stop treating model selection as the core AI architecture decision and instead design for extensibility and control across a multi-model future. The business impact is lower switching cost, less rework, and better compliance when governance, identity, access, and audit controls live in the data layer rather than being rebuilt around each model. For IT organizations, this means building AI platforms that can absorb continuous change without fragmenting data estates, creating brittle point-to-point integrations, or tying enterprise value to a single vendor.