When AI is no longer a project, but a function.
A few days per month to lead AI strategy in your company. The role of a Chief AI Officer, sized for an SME or mid-market firm, without the cost of a full-time hire.
Who this is for
You've moved past the pilot stage. AI is everywhere in your company, with no one to direct it.
Your teams use AI. Several initiatives are running, sometimes well, sometimes in duplicate. Questions arrive about data, vendors, risks, ethics, and each is handled by a different department. No one internally has the authority or the perspective to arbitrate.
Hiring a full-time Chief AI Officer doesn't yet make sense: the need is real, but not at the level of a permanent function. Yet doing nothing means letting AI drift from the bottom up, in silos, without coherence.
The fractional role responds precisely to this in-between zone: a function held, sustained over time, at a dosage that matches your maturity.
The role
Four axes. One thread.
A Chief AI Officer doesn't do AI. They decide what the company does with it, what it doesn't do, and how it prepares for what's coming. The role covers four dimensions, addressed in parallel.
Axis 01
Strategy
Define and defend the company's AI bets. Choose which initiatives to pursue, which to drop, in what order, with what resources.
AI roadmap · Investment trade-offs · Sequencing
Axis 02
Governance
Structure decisions on data, security, vendors, internal usage. Set the frame that lets the organisation move fast without going off the rails.
Usage policy · Vendor selection · Risk & compliance
Axis 03
Capability
Build the AI organisation over time. Decide who gets trained, who gets hired, what external partners, what internal architecture.
Training plan · Hires · Team architecture
Axis 04
Communication
Translate AI for the board, the executive committee, the shareholders. Align narrative, ambitions and real capabilities. Avoid promises that come back to bite.
Board briefing · Internal communication · Investor narrative
The CAIO co-builds the AI strategy with leadership. They then roll it out with the teams on the ground, gradually, at the right pace.
The engagement, in practice
A regular presence, not a constant one.
A fractional CAIO is not a consultant you call ad hoc, nor a senior leader rented full-time. It's a structured role, with a cadence, a clear direction, and a planned end.
Cadence
2 to 6 days per month
A monthly AI steering committee. Periodic deep dives. Asynchronous availability for urgent decisions. The cadence adapts to the maturity of your organisation.
Duration
6 months minimum, renewable
Below six months, you only get advice. Beyond, the engagement renews as long as it's meaningful. The objective remains to make me redundant, through an internal hire or your own team.
Reporting line
C-Suite · Executive committee
I report directly to the C-Suite and sit in strategic decision-making. Without that level of authority, the role has no reach. Then it's not worth creating.
Pricing
Fixed monthly fee
An amount agreed upfront, based on cadence and scope. No hourly billing. No surcharge for urgencies, they're part of the role.
A note on discretion
A fractional CAIO works at both the board level and at the operational core. At that level, what gets shared during an engagement, fragilities, disagreements, bets not yet communicated, doesn't leave the room. I don't publish client names, and I never use what gets said in one organisation with another.
That discretion isn't a courtesy. It's the operating condition of the role.
What's next
If the timing is right, write to me.
A few sentences on where you are: what's working, what's drifting, what you'd like to unlock in the next twelve months. I respond personally, within 48 hours.
Write to me