Some debt is a sensible trade-off to launch sooner. It becomes a business problem when every change takes weeks, only one person understands a critical system, or integrations break whenever something is updated.
For example, a pricing spreadsheet built on years of manual macros may still work but block any attempt to connect pricing to the CRM or automate quotes. Technical debt also affects AI projects directly, because automation built on unclear data and fragile systems inherits their problems. The misconception is that debt must be cleared all at once. Most teams do better paying it down alongside planned work, starting with the areas that slow the business most.