fractional caio
AI is now the thing that decides who wins your market, and nobody senior at your company owns it. We do. A fractional AI chief who sets the strategy, drives the roadmap, and answers to your board.
what you're actually hiring
Right now AI at your company is a group chat and a few brave people expensing subscriptions. No owner, no plan, no one telling the board whether any of it is working.
A fractional CAIO takes the whole thing. The strategy, the roadmap and its order, the model and vendor calls, the safety rules, the budget, and getting your team good at this. Part-time, on your leadership team, reporting to you.
what a caio owns
We figure out where AI is existential for you and where it's a distraction, then write the strategy your leadership team can act on. No forty-slide future-of-work deck. A short document with a bet in it.
A sequenced roadmap of what gets built, in what order, and why. We say no to the shiny thing when the boring thing pays back faster, and we tell you exactly why we sequenced it that way.
What data models can touch, what stays human, where the audit trail lives, how you stay on the right side of your customers and your regulators. Written down before an agent touches real work, not after an incident.
Which models, which tools, which vendors, and what you build yourself. We cut the subscriptions nobody uses and pick for your actual workload, not the one on the billboard at the airport.
The point is not a workshop everyone forgets by Friday. We get your team genuinely good at the tools that matter to their jobs, so the capability lives in your company after we hand off.
Your board wants to know if the AI spend is working. We give them the honest read every quarter: what shipped, what it's worth, what's next, and where the risk sits. In plain language they can act on.
how the engagement runs
01
We start with the free audit: what AI you're already using, what's leaking money, where the real opportunities and risks sit. You get an honest map of your starting line, not a sales pitch.
02
We write the strategy, sequence the roadmap, and put the governance and budget in place. You and your board sign off on one plan everyone can see, with the first bets named.
03
This is the part most strategy work skips. We show up in your leadership meetings, push the roadmap forward, make the vendor and model calls, upskill the team, and report progress until AI is a capability you own.
A consultant hands you a deck and leaves. A fractional CAIO owns the outcome. We sit on your leadership team, make the calls, drive the roadmap month to month, and answer to your board for whether any of it worked. Accountability, not advice.
If you can find, afford, and keep a great full-time C-level AI leader, hire them. Most companies between ten and five hundred people can't yet justify that seat, but can't afford to leave AI ownerless either. Fractional is the answer for exactly that gap, and we'll tell you honestly when you've outgrown us.
A fractional CAIO retainer runs from $5,000/month, sized to how much of the mandate you're handing over. We don't publish a fixed menu because the scope depends on your stage. See the full ladder at /pricing, and you'll have exact numbers in writing after the free audit.
Involved, on purpose. The whole point is that the capability stays with you. We lead the strategy and the hard calls, but we build the muscle inside your team as we go, so you're stronger at this after the engagement than during it.
The free audit maps where AI is existential for your business, where you're exposed, and what a fractional chief would drive first. All before you spend a dollar.
We take on companies ready to invest $5,000+/month in doing this properly.
