Time: 11:00 AM
Room: ASC A
Owning Intelligence: When to Build AI and When to Buy It
Leadership Perspectives on Sourcing, Scaling, and Governing Enterprise AI
As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise mandate, executives face a defining strategic question:
What intelligence should we own — and what should we source?
The build vs. buy decision is no longer just a technology choice. It’s a business model decision that impacts competitive differentiation, speed to market, cost structure, talent strategy, and risk posture.
In this executive panel, technology and business leaders will share how they are evaluating AI investments across proprietary development, commercial platforms, and hybrid approaches. Panelists will discuss the frameworks, tradeoffs, and real-world lessons shaping their decisions — from GenAI copilots and predictive models to agentic automation and industry-specific AI solutions.
Attendees will gain practical insight into how leading organizations are:
Determining where AI creates unique competitive advantage
Balancing speed, cost, and control
Governing data, IP, and regulatory risk
Building sustainable internal AI capability
Structuring vendor and hyperscaler partnerships
Whether early in your AI journey or scaling enterprise adoption, this session will provide actionable guidance for making smarter AI sourcing decisions.
Amy Browne
VP, Software Engineering
Prime Therapeutics
Amy Browne serves as the Vice President of IT Innovation at Prime Therapeutics, based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. In this role, she leads initiatives to drive technological advancements and innovative solutions within the company.
As Vice President at Cardiovascular Systems, Amy established strategic direction, oversight, and growth of IT capabilities, delivering increasing value to the business. Amy was selected by the CEO to lead the company's digital transformation initiative, resulting in a transformation in customer engagement and providing new digital products to CSI's customers.
Zach Hughes
Vice President of IT Infrastructure & Operations
CHS
Zach Hughes is Vice President of IT Infrastructure & Operations at CHS, a leading energy, grains and foods company and the largest farmer-owned cooperative in the United States. In his role, Hughes leads the Infrastructure & Operations teams as well as our Data, Analytics, and AI teams.
Zach has 27 years of experience in enterprise technology in a variety of disciplines including DevOps, cloud computing, cyber security, and customer-facing digital product leadership. He is passionate about leading innovative technical teams that create a competitive advantage for business.
Prior to CHS, Zach held various IT leadership positions at Wells Fargo and GMAC Financial Services. Zach earned his MA in Organizational Leadership from Bethel University, St. Paul, Minn.
Steve Massey
Vice President, Product Engineering
SPS Commerce
Steve Massey leads Product Engineering at SPS Commerce, where he is responsible for modernizing cloud platforms and scaling the engineering organization that supports them. He leads a global team focused on building resilient, high-performance SaaS systems that power enterprise supply chain operations.
His work centers on bringing practical AI into core products and engineering workflows — embedding predictive analytics, automation, and GenAI capabilities into production systems that serve thousands of customers. Steve focuses on how engineering organizations adopt AI responsibly: deciding what to build, where to partner, and how to balance speed, cost, control, and governance.
He is particularly interested in how AI shifts the role of engineering leadership — from delivering features to architecting durable intelligence into the enterprise.