Fractional Chief AI Officer
An AI leader for your business, without the full-time hire.
After the extended engagements, you choose how to run what we built. There are two options.
Option 1
Take full control
Everything comes over to you, period: the sites and services running on the public internet, your GitHub repo, your knowledge vault and your on-site AI appliance. Your team runs it.Option 2
Let SMB AI manage it
Buy products and services from SMB AI, along the way or at the end of the engagement, and pay for us to manage them. You still own your data, your code and your knowledge.With either option, I can stay on as your part-time Chief AI Officer: owning the AI roadmap, governance and vendor choices, and bringing your team the latest developments. And if we ever part ways, you own everything.
Monthly retainer
Depends on scope
- A monthly meeting with leadership and one with your AI governance team
- Build sessions scheduled through the month
- Governance, policies and vendor decisions
- The systems we built, kept running and improving
- Unlimited chat access through Teams, Slack or Google Chat
“My goal is to enable your team. I am a coach and a teacher, and I want your team to be able to carry on this work without me.”
The approach
The principles behind my work.
Every recommendation I make comes back to these nine ideas. They come from 40 years of putting technology to work inside a running business.
Tech is culture
Tech enablement is like culture: it has to happen everywhere
It can’t live in one department or with one person. Every team gets the tools, the training and the permission to use them.
The people closest to the work
The people doing the work know how to make it better
They see the friction every day. Give them the tools and they will find the fix faster than anyone from outside.
Problems first
Take a problems-first approach
Start with what slows people down, then choose the technology. A tool picked first goes looking for a problem.
The work is in the plumbing
The work is in the plumbing
Build the connections, create a safe and powerful environment to innovate, then tell people to go solve their problems. The plumbing is what makes everything else possible.
Fix their problems first
Fix people’s problems first, and they will fix yours
Early wins for the people doing the work earn trust and time. Once their day gets easier, they bring energy to the bigger goals.
Unlock your superstars
You have tech superstars in your organization right now
They are members of your existing teams, and they can leverage this technology. The job is to unlock them with access, a safe place to build and time to do it.
Own it
Control your data, own your software, protect your intellectual property
Know where and how your data is used. Keep sensitive data away from AI models, and own your code and systems.
Low- or no-cost software
The goal is low- or no-cost software
Open-source tools and modest subscriptions in place of large licenses and long-term contracts. Spend on people and outcomes, not seats.
Aim at the right tech
You already have people working on tech. But it’s the wrong tech.
The skill and energy are already there. Point them at tools you can build on and own, so the effort compounds.
What I own
Leadership and accountability, not another software vendor.
A Chief AI Officer is responsible for how AI gets used across the business. That is a leadership job: setting direction, making decisions and keeping people moving. It is not a sales pitch for a platform. I’ve held the finance, technology, marketing, sales, operations and people seats myself, so I know what each part of your business is trying to achieve.
Direction
The AI roadmap
What to build next, in what order, and why. Priorities come from the problems your people raise.
Rules
Governance and policy
Who can see which data, which tools are approved, and how policy reaches the people using the tools.
Choices
Vendors and tools
Which models, apps and services to use, and which to drop, with no platform to sell you.
Upkeep
The systems we built
Guardrail, Foundry, Vault, Keep and Cypher, kept healthy, improving and documented.
People
Training and coaching
Your core AI group gets better every week, and your early movers bring the rest of the team along.
News
What’s changing
AI moves fast. I bring the developments that matter to your business, and skip the ones that don’t.
How a month runs
A month with a rhythm your team can count on.
Two meetings a month, build sessions scheduled in between, and unlimited chat the rest of the time. I take a seat on your AI governance team. I’m in the room for the decisions, not reporting from outside them. Part of my goal is to build a trusted, high-level relationship with you, the owner, about technology, culture and execution.
A monthly meeting with leadership: where AI stands against the roadmap, what it is returning, and the decisions only leadership can make.
A monthly meeting of the AI governance team, with me at the table: policy, data access, architecture, vendor choices and the build against the roadmap.
Scheduled through the month, side by side with your people, building and improving the tools on the roadmap.
Unlimited access through Teams, Slack or Google Chat. And I do the work outside the room: upkeep, fixes, research and getting the next build ready.
Read: Two meetings to start with, the Claude jam and the AI committee →
Where it fits
The last step of the climb. Then run it with or without me.
Months 1-3
Base Camp
Months 4-6
Ascent
Months 7-9
Summit
Then, monthly
Fractional CAIO
Governance, GitHub repositories, internal AI appliances, data translators: when you take it sovereign, you have to manage these. I can do it for you with the products I offer, or you can do it yourself.
Governance
Guardrail
$300 a month
GitHub
Foundry
$400 a month
Knowledge base
Vault
$500 a month
Private AI translation
Cypher
$600 a month
Local AI
Keep
$700 a month
Built during Ascent and Summit, and also available on their own. Discounts are available when multiple products and services are bundled.
Free · 20-minute call with Greg
Is a Fractional CAIO right for your company?
Let’s talk about where your business is with AI today, and what a part-time Chief AI Officer would own for you.
Questions
Questions people ask
What does a Fractional Chief AI Officer do?
I own the AI roadmap, governance and vendor choices for your business. Each month I meet with leadership and with your AI governance team, run build sessions with your people, keep the systems we built running and improving, and stay reachable by chat in between.
How is this different from a consultant?
A consultant usually delivers a report and leaves. A Fractional CAIO stays, owns the decisions and is accountable for the results month after month. And I’ve run every part of a business myself, from the P&L to HR. See what makes that different.
Do I need the extended engagements first?
The Fractional CAIO comes after Base Camp, Ascent and Summit. By then we know your business, your people and your systems, and there is something real to run and improve.
How much does it cost?
$5,000 to $10,000 a month, depending on scope.
Who owns what we build?
You do. Your data, your code and your knowledge stay with you. I help you maintain them and work with your team so you can do more yourselves.