This article was originally published in Fast Company on October 14, 2026.
In a recent article for Fast Company, I argued that trust has become the new currency for AI companies operating in government and public sector markets. Trust is earned through transparency, accountability, and a willingness to educate buyers about how an AI system works.
There is a second element of that trust that deserves equal attention: partnership. The companies earning the most trust today are not simply building products for their customers. They are building products with them and allowing that relationship to shape what the product becomes.
Partnerships build trust
Transparency and partnership are two different ways of earning trust. Transparency is a company telling customers it can be trusted. Partnership is a company proving it, repeatedly, in the way its product evolves.
When a company incorporates a customer’s feedback into how a product works, and can point to specific instances where that happened, it gives the customer concrete evidence of good faith rather than a general assurance of it. Over time, that evidence compounds.
Each round of input and visible response gives the customer more reason to extend trust the next time, and a stronger foundation for the vendor to build on. That is especially important when the customers are government and public safety buyers because they tend to extend trust more slowly and more carefully.
Partnership aligns products with need
Partnership also ensures the product is solving the right problem. A capability like AI weapons detection is only valuable if it fits with how police officers actually work.
Organizations deploying AI in defense, corrections, and law enforcement understand the day-to-day realities of their missions better than any outside team ever will. They know what information is useful and what is noise, which workflows create friction, and where automation helps without displacing required human judgment in decision-making. Those insights surface reliably only through sustained collaboration, not through a demo or an annual survey. In the AI era, judgment will matter more than intelligence.
A survey of U.S. first responders and law enforcement by public safety software company Mark43 found that 69% rely on outside technology partners for their AI tools, and 79% said human oversight of AI remains essential even as adoption grows. Partnership, in other words, isn’t an abstract ideal for this market. It’s the operating model agencies already expect, and the companies that build genuine collaboration into how their products evolve are simply meeting an expectation that already exists.
The stakes here are not hypothetical; in Israel, for example, AI has become an everyday tool that is helping to save lives.
Partnership is not a slogan
Trust and partnership don’t happen by accident. They require companies to build actual mechanisms for customers to flag what isn’t working, not just what they’d like added next, and to follow through visibly enough that customers can see their input reflected in what products ship. Companies that treat this as a standing discipline, rather than an occasional listening exercise, tend to end up with both a better product and a more durable relationship with the people who depend on them.
Trust is the foundation. Partnership is how trust gets built, one product decision at a time.
Elliott Broidy is chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings, a family office specializing in AI-driven public safety software. Over his four-decade career, Broidy has founded, invested in, and in many cases managed as CEO more than 160 companies.