A Head of AI decides what AI the company builds and buys, kills the parts that do not work, and owns how AI is used across the business. What they do not do, mostly, is build the AI themselves. That single distinction clears up most of the confusion about the role, because the title makes…
A Chief AI Officer, or Head of AI, is the senior executive responsible for how a company uses AI across the whole business: the strategy, the portfolio of AI initiatives, the governance, the vendor decisions, and whether any of it actually produces a return. The role exists because AI became consequential enough to need a…
A fractional CMO and a fractional Head of AI are both senior executives you hire part-time on a retainer, and they answer two different questions. A fractional CMO owns your marketing: the strategy, the budget, the channels, the number the marketing function is accountable for. A fractional Head of AI owns how your company uses…
A fractional executive is a senior leader, a CFO, a CMO, a COO, a Head of AI, who works with your company part-time on a retainer instead of full-time on a salary. They do the executive job, setting strategy, owning a function, making the decisions that carry real risk, but scaled to what a growing…
An AI consultant and an embedded Head of AI solve two different problems, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake a founder-led firm makes with AI. A consultant answers a bounded question: which tool to buy, why a pilot stalled, how to fix one workflow. An embedded Head of AI owns the decisions that…
Vendor lock-in in AI is what happens when a better, cheaper, or safer AI option exists, but the cost of switching to it is high enough to keep you where you are. The lock is rarely a contract clause. It is the accumulated weight of workflows built on one provider’s proprietary interfaces, company data sitting…
A fractional CFO is a chief financial officer who works with your company part-time, on a retainer, instead of full-time on a salary. They do the same job a full-time CFO would, financial strategy, forecasting, cash management, fundraising, board reporting, but scaled to what a growing company actually needs, which is usually senior judgment on…