Guides
Straight answers on AI in production.
No hype. The questions leaders actually ask before bringing in AI help — answered plainly.
What is a fractional AI CTO?
A fractional AI CTO is a senior AI leader you hire part-time. They set the AI strategy and own the architecture, then stay on the hook until it’s running in production. Your engineers do most of the building and own what ships. The hardest pieces — agent orchestration, retrieval, evaluation harnesses — the fractional lead writes personally.
Fractional AI CTO or a full-time AI executive: which should you hire?
Hiring a full-time AI executive means a months-long search and senior-executive comp, usually committed before AI has proven where it pays. A fractional AI CTO gives you the same seniority part-time, starts in weeks, and leaves something running when they go. Most companies should do that first, then hire permanently once the return is on paper.
Why do most AI pilots never reach production?
Because nobody owns getting them there. MIT found that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots delivered no measurable P&L impact in 2025. The model is rarely the problem. What’s missing is a named owner, a narrow scope, and the unglamorous production engineering — evaluations, monitoring, cost controls, security sign-off — that makes leadership willing to turn it on.
The assessment takes about five minutes and gives you your stage, your real constraint, and the next move worth funding. If you’d rather talk it through, take thirty minutes with me. You’ll get a real answer either way, whether or not we end up working together.