The Integration Tax: Walled-Garden Agent Strategies Won't Scale (MxN vs. M+N)

Personio maintains 200+ integrations. Greenhouse has 400+. iCIMS lists 800+. Every single one is a point-to-point adapter somebody had to scope, build, test, and keep alive. That was fine when the other end was a stable SaaS product with a versioned API and a partnerships team you could email. Now the other end is an AI agent that shipped last Tuesday, pivots next month, and might not exist by Q3. The math is about to break. And not just in recruiting. The startup spree nobody asked for There are over 100 AI recruiting startups right now. Sourcing agents. Screening agents. Scheduling agents. Matching agents. Interview agents. Reference-check agents. Most of them do roughly the same thing with slightly different wrappers. And every single one wants your API. If you're an integration engineer: each new agent means onboarding, sandbox access, field mapping, testing, a contract, a fee conversation. Half of them will pivot or shut down within 18 months — leaving you maintaining dead integra