The Quiet Revolution in Enterprise AI Software and Why it Matters

AI Product maturity will bring about long lasting change and survive the hype cycle.

We’re drowning in AI tools, or at least it feels that way. My Product Hunt feed looks like a never-ending stream of “AI-powered” everything. Need an AI writing assistant? Here’s fifty. Want AI to manage your calendar? Take your pick from hundreds. But while we’re chasing the next viral AI app, there’s a quieter, more thoughtful revolution happening in enterprise software development that nobody’s talking about.

I recently had an unexpected conversation with Michael Smith, an ex-Googler and CEO of Sagittal AI that challenged my thinking about where AI is actually making a difference. Sagittal’s flagship product, Neo, represents a fundamentally different approach to AI in software development. Rather than just another coding assistant, Neo functions as an integrated team member that works within existing development workflows. It can take tasks from your project management system, make code changes following team standards, create pull requests, and maintain documentation. All while preserving the human oversight that enterprise development demands.

What struck me wasn’t just the technical sophistication of their approach, but how Michael’s perspective cuts through the typical AI hype to reveal something more nuanced about how artificial intelligence can genuinely transform enterprise.

The Maturity Gap in AI Solutions

There’s a world of difference between building another AI chat interface and creating solutions that can meaningfully integrate into enterprise software development workflows. As Michael pointed out during our conversation, “AI tech is great, but it’s not going to solve everything by just having a larger model… You need a certain amount of integration of the AI with whatever your business problem is going to be.” He’s right. The current market’s “magic bullet” approach often backfires, with companies overpromising and underdelivering, creating unrealistic expectations about what AI tools can actually achieve in enterprise environments.

When discussing AI’s capabilities in development tasks, Michael noted that “if you have a task that would probably take you four hours, probably the LLM can do a pretty good job of getting 90 to 100% right in about five minutes.” But the key isn’t just the speed. In enterprise environments, every change needs to be traceable, every decision reviewable, and every process integrated with existing tools and workflows. This is where the real challenge lies. Not in the AI capabilities themselves, but in making them work within the complex reality of enterprise software development.

Rethinking AI’s Role

“The ability to regurgitate sentences is actually simpler than we thought it was. The ability to empathize with a human and really understand their problems, I still think is much harder than we think it is for any machine to do right now,” Michael shared. This perspective reveals a crucial insight about how we should be thinking about AI in enterprise environments.

During our conversation, I found myself thinking like a marketer: “Why not position this as a way to get a full-stack developer for a fraction of the cost?” It seemed like an obvious selling point. But Michael’s response revealed why mature AI companies think differently.

“We don’t pretend to be better than humans, or replace them. We aim to augment them,” he explained, firmly steering away from the replacement narrative. Instead of chasing explosive growth by promising to replace expensive development teams, Sagittal takes a more thoughtful approach. They carefully select partner teams who understand that AI works best as an augmentation of human capabilities, not a replacement.

The Next Evolution in Software Development

What I took away from this conversation is that while everyone’s chasing the next viral AI app, the real revolution is happening quietly in enterprise environments. The companies that are actually moving the needle aren’t the ones making the boldest claims about AI replacing humans. They’re the ones doing the hard work of figuring out how AI can meaningfully augment human capabilities within existing enterprise workflows.

As Michael put it, “I think we need to really realize where our limitation is… what you need to employ humans to do versus computers, the line has shifted.” Understanding this shift, and responding to it thoughtfully rather than reactively, is what separates serious enterprise AI solutions from the flood of AI tools we see every day.

The next time you see another AI app promising to revolutionize everything, remember: the real revolution isn’t happening in your Twitter feed or Product Hunt dashboard. It’s happening in enterprise development teams that are quietly figuring out how to make AI work in the real world, one thoughtful integration at a time.

If you’re leading a development team and think your organization could benefit from this kind of measured, intelligent approach to AI integration, feel free to reach out to me directly. I’d be happy to make an introduction to Michael and the Sagittal team.

This article is based on a conversation with Michael Smith, CEO of Sagittal AI. The discussion covered various aspects of AI in enterprise software development, from practical applications to philosophical implications. AIL 3 — Created using AI with extensive human structure.