I help CIOs and infrastructure leaders turn AI spend into measurable value and close the accountability gap — the agents, costs, and risk that scaled faster than the controls around them.
You'll talk to me. There is no one else, and no handoff to a delivery team after you sign. The person who scopes the work is the person who does it.
The adoption spree is over. Boards and CFOs are asking what the spend returned, while agents and tools you never approved keep multiplying. That's three problems wearing one trench coat.
Budgets blown on experimentation, no clean line from cost to business value. The CFO wants the ROI number you can't yet produce.
Teams spin up agents and tools independently. You're held responsible for AI you didn't approve, can't see, and can't unplug.
Policies without enforcement. Real control is technical and operational — not a slide deck — and it has to scale without killing velocity.
Gartner predicts that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 — driven by escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls.
Gartner press release, 25 June 2025 — sourceCost, value, and control. Those are the three things I measure — and they're the three reasons the projects get killed. The point of a diagnostic is to find out which side of that 40% you're on while you can still do something about it.
Two weeks, one fixed price, six artifacts you can act on. You'll know what your AI actually costs, what it returns, who owns it, and which three workflows are worth keeping — before you commit to anything larger.
Most AI engagements in this market start around $25,000 and run twelve weeks before you learn anything.
Find out what you actually need for $3,500 first. If the answer is a large build, you'll walk into that conversation knowing which three workflows justify it — and the diagnostic will have cost you a rounding error against the quote. If the answer is that you don't need one, that's the cheapest $3,500 you'll spend this year.
Ten-plus years running hyperscale infrastructure operations at AWS and Meta: deployment, power, capacity, and the AI/GPU buildout as it actually happened, including the parts that went badly. A firm sends you a framework and a team of analysts. You get someone who has made these decisions with real consequences attached.
And the structural part that matters more than the résumé: implementation firms get paid when the answer is "yes, build it." I don't. No vendor referral fees, no reseller relationships, no partner commissions. If I made money on the recommendation, the recommendation would be worth nothing.
The AI Value Diagnostic is $3,500, fixed fee and fixed scope, delivered in two weeks. No hourly billing, no change order.
Afterward there may be nothing. It's designed to stand alone — your team can execute every recommendation without me. If you want help with what comes next, we scope that separately.
They get paid when the answer is "yes, build it." I don't.
An implementation firm is often the right call, and I'll say so when it is. But you cannot get an independent read on whether your AI spend is working from the company that gets paid to sell you more of it. I'm the second opinion before a six-figure signature.
Then the readout says that, in writing, and you've spent $3,500 to find out instead of $25,000.
If you're still experimenting and nobody is asking hard questions yet, save your money and call me when they start.
Six more answers — scope, independence, production access, working outside Charlotte — are on the Diagnostic page.
No pitch deck, no proposal theater — a working conversation about what the win is worth to you. If there's a fit, I'll show you exactly how I'd approach it. I take a limited number of engagements at a time.