Budgeting for Agentic AI in 2027: What to Ask Every Vendor

Ishita Jaiswal, Head of Growth at Multimodal, interviews Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder of Multimodal.📩 Subscribe to the Main Street AI Newsletter: https://multimodal.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=podcastMultimodal builds agentic workflows for credit unions and community banks, covering member experience and lending operations. Ankur argues that a 2027 budget has to fund three things at once, an account on one of the big three models for every single person, a hard look at whether your incumbent vendors are opening their software up or walling it off, and a few net new agentic partners, with every vendor pushed to show simulated usage numbers before anyone signs.Guest: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, MultimodalHost: Ishita Jaiswal, Head of Growth, Multimodal0:00 Introduction: Meet Ishita0:57 The two categories of agentic AI2:39 Where credit unions start on personal productivity3:15 Leadership, stewards, and uneven adoption6:06 Member experience and lending operations8:12 Why growth beats cost efficiency9:19 Three pieces of budgeting advice for 202713:20 Walled gardens and the SaaS apocalypse16:19 Usage pricing, tokens, and simulated numbers20:04 What Multimodal built for credit unions23:43 The ROI bar and the tuition expense25:56 Closing