There's a non-zero possibility that the engineering org did report back to the CEO that they could build it.
I've many a large company M&A scuttled due to NIH syndrome from engineering. And almost always they massively underestimated the effort needed to build something (including whether they had the talent or not).
I know of atleast one case where it has resulted in long term serious strategic harm for BigCo when they refused to do a small acquisition (single digit seven figures) because of exactly this scenario.
The whole engineering/NIH/underestimate situation certainly rings true.
OTOH, there also tends to be a vast underestimate on how difficult it will be to integrate an existing product (even if it is already built) into a new company.
It is extremely rare that a product the company is acquiring for is exactly the product they need, it is usually 90% of the product they need, and they're still going to have to get the second 90% done while simultaneously working on all the culture issues that pop up when trying to bring two companies together.
I've many a large company M&A scuttled due to NIH syndrome from engineering. And almost always they massively underestimated the effort needed to build something (including whether they had the talent or not).
I know of atleast one case where it has resulted in long term serious strategic harm for BigCo when they refused to do a small acquisition (single digit seven figures) because of exactly this scenario.