How Do You Pick an AI POC Development Company When Every Vendor Promises the Moon

[RemoteState]

Genuinely asking because I am running out of patience with this process.
We budgeted for ai poc development to test whether an AI-driven quality inspection system makes sense for our manufacturing line before committing to a full build. Simple enough goal. But finding an ai poc development company that treats a POC as a real validation exercise instead of a sales funnel for a bigger contract has been a nightmare.

Every vendor we talked to jumped straight into pitching a full product roadmap before we even confirmed the concept was viable. That completely defeats the purpose. We do not need a roadmap right now. We need someone who can tell us honestly whether this idea works or not within six weeks.

What Finally Helped Us Separate Serious Teams from the Sales Machines
Almost gave up on the search entirely before a founder friend shared what worked when he went through the same thing last year. Here is what actually matters when picking an ai poc development company:
Their first instinct should be scoping down not scoping up because the whole point of ai poc development is to validate fast with minimal investment not build half a product
Any ai poc development services provider that cannot define clear success and failure criteria before starting is not running a real POC they are just billing hours
Ask what happens if the POC proves the idea does not work because the best ai poc development company teams will answer that honestly instead of guaranteeing results they cannot predict
They should be able to deliver something testable within four to eight weeks not four to eight months because a POC that takes half a year is just a slow product build with a different label
Ai poc development services should include a clear handoff document at the end that any development team can pick up and build from not something locked into their proprietary setup
The best ai poc development company will actively try to kill your idea during the POC because that is literally the job and if they are not stress testing assumptions they are wasting your money

Where I Stand
Ended up finding one team that matched most of the above and we are two weeks into the pilot now. Too early to say if it will work but the approach already feels completely different from the vendors who just wanted to upsell. If anyone has gone through ai poc development recently especially in manufacturing or hardware adjacent industries would love to compare notes on how yours went.