Every week, I see flashy demos raising millions of dollars. But no one talks about what happens beyond the demo. Most AI companies die in the gap between "wow" and "works." The demo works because: - The use case was cherry picked - Controlled environments - Dummy or no real user data - Zero edge cases - Almost perfect conditions for the demo In reality, production requires: - Data governance and security - Access control and permissions - Error handling and observability - Integration with legacy systems - Compliance with regulations - Reliability and uptime!! The gap is not in the models because they already pack powerful enough capabilities. The gap is real software engineering. You can't vibe-code your way through enterprise security. You can't prompt your way past compliance. You can't demo away production complexity. This is why most AI pilots never scale. Teams that understand this gap will build systems that work reliably even when no one is looking! That's where the real opportunity is.