Erwan Simon, CEO of GENIAL, reacts to Société Générale's decision to abandon its internal tool SoGPT in early 2026 to adopt Microsoft Copilot. He argues that this build vs buy debate constitutes a false framing that masks the real strategic question: who owns the business intelligence you build with AI?
The article denounces the error of comparing ChatGPT or Claude to office software like Word or Excel. Unlike these finished products with fixed functionality, AI systems are both consumer interfaces and APIs enabling custom business applications. They are infrastructure, not commodities.
Simon analyzes SoGPT's failure not as a validation of the buy model, but as an execution error: a generic chat interface disconnected from banking operations, without a continuous evolution strategy. The error was not building in-house, but creating a product with no operational anchoring.
Copilot has its own limitations. Useful for generic tasks, it struggles with specialized operations such as ERP queries or compliance workflows. Many deployments plateau after the initial pilots due to difficulties measuring ROI, governance issues, and unintended data exposure via existing permission structures.
The author cites AllianzGPT as a successful alternative model. Allianz built a platform, not just an interface, orchestrating multiple components: multiple language models (Azure OpenAI and Anthropic's Claude), connectors to internal systems, and full traceability of decisions for regulatory compliance. This architecture preserves organizational assets independently of any single vendor.
Simon defines the concept of "AI capital" as the set of encodable business knowledge: documented processes, business rules, historical decisions, tacit expertise made explicit. It is this asset that creates a durable competitive advantage.
The article concludes with a warning about European sovereignty. Europe lost cloud sovereignty in the 2010s by migrating to AWS, Azure, and Google. Repeating this mistake with AI means outsourcing the capacity to generate AI-driven value to American competitors. The fundamental question: will European companies build indigenous AI capabilities, or will they become permanent consumers of intelligence systems controlled by the United States?