SaaS on Ben Petito

Millions a Month to Save $600,000 a Year

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0930

I was drinking my coffee last night and reading about Curative, the US health insurer whose CEO has been talking up how much of their operation now runs on AI agents. One line stood out and stopped me. They’re spending millions of dollars a month on AI, and the headline they’re celebrating is cancelling a $600,000-a-year Salesforce contract because they vibe-coded their own CRM. Saving $600k a year is a good day. It just looks a bit different sitting next to a bill climbing into the millions a month, and it got me thinking about what actually gets counted when a story like this gets shared.

Our AI Bill Went From About $120 a Month to at Least $2,000

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +1030

California just gave every one of its state agencies access to Claude at half price, and extended the same deal down to local councils and cities. As an arrangement it’s hard to fault - cheaper AI for public servants, training included, one place to buy it through instead of forty. If I ran a government I’d probably take it too. But the number I keep coming back to isn’t the discount. It’s what it costs to leave, once a whole government has quietly built its work around a single vendor.

Build vs Buy Didn't Get Easier. The Bill Just Moved.

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +1030

A survey did the rounds last week — Retool surveyed a few hundred people who build internal software, and a third of them responded saying they’d already replaced a SaaS tool with something they’d built themselves. This is worth taking with a grain of salt, it’s a company that sells a build-your-own-tools platform asking builders if they like building tools. But the direction matches what I’m seeing and reading, and more neutral voices are saying the same thing. The advent of AI (LLMs specifically) has made “build it in a week” feel real, so the build-vs-buy question is open again.