Switchboard — Vendor Exit Planner for AI Tools
A decision tool that helps a business decide whether to keep, renegotiate, or sunset an AI vendor by modelling data-sovereignty, switching cost, and contractual exposure in plain English.
general managers evaluating renewals of AI subscriptions and needing a defensible decision
- Contract reviewer that flags clauses around model training, derivative works, and IP ownership — with a 'what you actually give up' summary.
- Switch-cost estimator: data export effort, retraining cost on an alternative, and downtime risk for each vendor.
- Renegotiation script generator tailored to the issues flagged in the contract, with realistic fallback positions.
- A side-by-side comparison of up to three vendors, against the same checklist, so renewals are not adversarial.
When stories like the Dev.to 'AI leak' series reach mainstream attention, businesses quietly start auditing renewals; this tool converts a panicked question into a structured decision.
Strong pull: 91% of AI tools in enterprise environments operate outside IT control, organizations average 269 shadow AI apps per 1,000 employees, 20% of orgs have already taken a breach traced to shadow AI, and 30% of 2025 breaches involved a third party — exactly the panic-driven renewal audit moment Switchboard targets.8 AI Vendor Risk Management Tools for 2026 | Torii ↗The Invisible Enterprise: Shadow AI and the Ungoverned Frontier ↗
Crowded adjacent space — Cognitiveview, Torii, Ivalua, Kodiak Hub, AI Awareness and Bamboo Data Consulting all sell AI vendor evaluation/risk products — but the specific 'renewal/exit decision' niche is only covered by blog playbooks (SFAI Labs exit-cost model, Swfte 7-dimension audit, AI Awareness exit strategies), not a dedicated tool.The AI Vendor Exit-Cost Model - SFAI Labs ↗AI Vendor Risk Assessment - cognitiveview.com ↗Exit Strategies from AI Vendors ↗
Buyers do pay: Cognitiveview lists tiered plans for AI Vendor Evaluation, Torii targets SaaS+AI governance at enterprise pricing, and third-party-breach data justifies procurement budgets — though positioning to 'general managers' (vs procurement/compliance) is unproven.AI Governance Platform Pricing | CognitiveView ↗Torii - The Governance Platform for SaaS and AI ↗
Tailwinds are structural: shadow AI inventory is a continuous problem, EU AI Act and emerging third-party-risk regulations make renewal audits recurring rather than one-off, and switching-cost frameworks (Swfte, SFAI, Vaasblock) show this is becoming a permanent category.AI Vendor Lock-in: How Enterprises Are Breaking Free in 2026 ↗Shadow AI Discovery and Inventory Methodology ↗
Buildable without novel research — a rule-based decision engine (questionnaire → weighted scoring across data-sovereignty, switching-cost, contract clauses) plus contract text extraction is straightforward; main effort is curating the question library and benchmark data.