Fractional Chief AI Officer
Real AI strategy.
Zero hype.
DepthWorks embeds experienced AI leadership into your organization. We help you capture real business value from AI—while protecting you from costly mistakes, vendor lock-in, and strategic drift.
Guiding AI strategy for mid-market and enterprise leadership.
The Problem
Every board wants AI. Almost no one knows what that means.
The AI industry has produced a lot of impressive demos and very little durable value. C-suites are under pressure to act, but surrounded by vendors with incentives misaligned with yours, consultants who haven't shipped production systems, and analysts selling frameworks instead of outcomes.
The result: expensive pilots that never scale, AI investments with no clear ROI, and organizations that move fast in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the real opportunities—the ones that actually compound—go unaddressed.
DepthWorks exists to change that calculation. We are operators, not theorists. We've built and deployed AI systems in production. We know the difference between a good demo and a defensible business outcome.
Core Capabilities
What we do
01
Executive Advisory
Board-level and C-suite counsel that translates AI capabilities into business decisions. We give leadership the framework to ask the right questions and reject the wrong vendors.
02
Strategic Defensibility
Map where AI creates competitive moats—and where it erodes yours. Protect market share before new entrants with leaner AI-native stacks make your cost structure obsolete.
03
Applied Solutions
We build. Marketing automation, internal workflows, SEO tooling, custom pipelines. Hands-on implementation from engineers who have shipped production AI systems.
04
Vendor Vetting
Sit on your side of the table when evaluating third-party AI pitches. We know what the demos hide and what the contracts obscure. No commissions. No conflicts.
Why Fractional
Senior AI leadership on day one. None of the overhead.
Hiring a full-time Chief AI Officer is a 12–18 month recruiting process that ends with a $300,000+ annual commitment—before you know if the role is scoped correctly. Most organizations don't need a full-time CAIO. They need senior AI judgment embedded at the right moments.
A fractional engagement gives you access to the same caliber of strategic and technical leadership, aligned to your actual needs, at a fraction of the cost and with none of the hiring risk.
$300k+
Fully-loaded cost of a full-time CAIO
12–18 mo
Typical time-to-hire for senior AI leadership
Day 1
When a fractional engagement delivers value
DepthWorks engagements are scoped, structured, and designed to transfer capability.
You get a partner, not a dependency.
Get Started
Let's find the signal in your noise.
A 30-minute strategy call to discuss your AI landscape, your organization's current posture, and where the real leverage points are. No pitch deck. No prepared slides. Just a direct conversation.
Book a Strategy Call →