Your part-time Chief AI Officer.

The engagement is designed to be lean on your organisation's time. Typically we require two to three hours per month from your leadership team — primarily the monthly board briefing and a standing check-in. Day-to-day, the CAIO operates independently, managing the virtual specialist team and driving progress without requiring constant internal coordination.

For the initial audit and strategy phase, slightly more input is needed as we learn your business — usually spread across discovery interviews with key stakeholders over a two-week window.

The Fractional CAIO service operates on an engagement-based model, typically structured as a monthly retainer following an initial strategy and audit phase. This ensures continuity, accountability, and genuine leadership — rather than the transactional nature of ad-hoc consulting.

Initial engagements start with a defined discovery and strategy sprint, after which the ongoing retainer cadence is agreed based on the size and complexity of your AI programme. Pricing is engagement-based — contact us for a proposal tailored to your situation.

A consultant delivers a deliverable — a report, a recommendation, a workshop — and then exits. A Fractional CAIO takes executive ownership of your AI programme on an ongoing basis. That means accountability for results, not just advice.

The difference in practice: a consultant tells you what to do; a Fractional CAIO leads the organisation in doing it — attending board meetings, managing specialist resources, measuring outcomes, and adapting strategy as circumstances change. You gain leadership, not a service provider.

The Fractional CAIO model works best for SMBs and scale-ups with 50 to 500 employees that are at an inflection point with AI — where the opportunity is clear, but the internal capability to lead it strategically is absent. We have delivered engagements across professional services, finance, healthcare administration, manufacturing, retail, and digital media.

The ideal client is a business that is already using AI tools operationally and needs to move from tactical adoption to strategic advantage — governed, coherent, and aligned to commercial objectives.

Pricing is engagement-based and varies according to the scope and duration of the programme, the size of your organisation, and the depth of specialist support required. We do not publish standard rates because every engagement is scoped individually — a growing 30-person business has different needs to a 200-person company preparing for an enterprise sales motion.

We are transparent about costs from the first conversation. Contact us for a no-obligation proposal and we will provide a clear, itemised engagement structure before any commitment is made.

Yes. Many clients begin with an AI Strategy Session — a 90-minute structured audit and roadmap call — which provides immediate, high-value output and a clear picture of whether a Fractional CAIO engagement is the right next step. There is no obligation to proceed beyond that initial session.

For those already certain of the need, we can move directly into the discovery and audit phase. Either route is a natural entry point into the full engagement model.