Board-ready AI leadership without the £250k salary.
A fractional Chief AI Officer for UK mid-market and enterprise companies. Strategy, governance, and shipped outcomes — embedded with your board and exec team, paid by the month, not the year.
You don’t need a £250k CAIO. You need the work a CAIO does.
Hiring a full-time Chief AI Officer takes six months, costs a quarter of a million, and is hard to reverse if the fit is wrong. Most mid-market and enterprise boards don’t need that yet — they need the output: a clear AI strategy, a defensible governance posture, and pilots that actually ship.
Full-time CAIO hire
- × 4–6 month search
- × 90-day ramp before strategy lands
- × Hard to course-correct if wrong fit
- × Recruitment fee on top (£40k+)
- × Single point of failure
Fractional CAIO with Head of AI
- ✓ Embedded within 2 weeks
- ✓ Board-grade AI strategy in 30 days
- ✓ Scale up or down as the work demands
- ✓ No recruitment fee, no equity dilution
- ✓ Backed by a network of specialists
What you actually get.
Not advisory hours. Owned outputs that move the business forward.
Board-grade AI strategy
A document your board can read in 15 minutes and act on the same week. Where AI moves your numbers, where it doesn’t, and the risks of doing nothing.
AI governance & risk posture
Policies, controls, and an AI register that hold up to scrutiny — from auditors, regulators, customers, and your insurer.
Use-case prioritisation
The five things worth piloting, the fifty that aren’t, and the criteria your team will use after I’m gone.
Vendor & build decisions
Honest assessments of the AI tooling on your shortlist. No commission, no preferred vendors — just what fits.
Team & hiring plan
The AI roles you should hire, in what order, and the ones you shouldn’t. Written for your CFO as much as your CTO.
Shipped pilots
At least one production-grade AI pilot live within the first quarter. Measured against your P&L, not vanity metrics.
How the first 90 days go.
Fast diagnosis, sharp strategy, then you see things shipping.
Diagnose
Exec interviews, data audit, vendor inventory. Where you really are vs. where you think you are.
Strategise
Board-grade strategy doc and use-case shortlist. Presented to your exec team and signed off.
Build
Governance live, first pilot scoped and started, vendor decisions made.
Ship
First pilot in production. Measured outcomes. Plan for the next quarter on your CFO’s desk.
Who this is for.
UK mid-market and enterprise companies (£25m–£1bn revenue) where the board is being asked, “what’s our AI plan?” — and the honest answer is “we’re working on it.”
You’re past the prototype phase
You’ve done a Copilot rollout or two. Now the board wants something defensible and the regulators are starting to ask.
You can’t justify a full-time CAIO yet
The role is real, the budget isn’t — or you want to de-risk the hire before committing to £250k+.
You need someone the board trusts
Not another consultant. Someone who sits in the meeting, owns the recommendation, and is still there next month.
Common questions.
If yours isn’t here, ask it on the call.
How is this different from a Big 4 or McKinsey engagement?
They send a team of consultants who leave you with slides. You get one senior operator who sits with your exec team, owns the strategy, and is accountable for the pilots that ship. Cost is typically 10–20% of an equivalent engagement.
How much time per month should we expect?
Typical engagements are 6–10 days a month, scaled up during the first 90 days and trimmed back as your team takes over. We agree the shape on the discovery call.
Do you sign NDAs and DPAs?
Yes, as a matter of course. We can sign yours, or use our standard mutual NDA. UK data-processing terms included by default.
What happens after the engagement ends?
The point is that you don’t need me forever. The strategy, governance, and team plan are yours. Many clients move to a lighter advisory retainer after the first 6 months; some hire their own CAIO using the plan we built together.
Will you sign an exclusivity clause?
Yes, within reason — sector exclusivity for the duration of an engagement is standard. Let’s discuss specifics on the call.
What does “from £5k / month” include?
A defined scope of strategic work, board access, governance setup, and a fixed number of operator days. Pricing scales with complexity and pace — we’ll quote precisely after the discovery call.
Selected Client Work
A sample of outcomes our Heads of AI have delivered across sectors.