Fractional AI Leadership
A senior operator embedded as your AI lead. Roadmap ownership, vendor and tooling decisions, hiring criteria, board narrative. The Chief AI Officer seat without the Chief AI Officer search.
The fractional CAIO is the most underrated C-suite structure of 2026. AI strategy needs a full-time owner at executive level. Most mid-market consumer businesses can't defensibly justify a $400K-plus base-plus-equity hire, certainly not before they know what shape the role should take. The gap is obvious; the right structure is less so.
A Higher Agency founder takes the seat on a quarterly retainer. We own the AI roadmap end-to-end: what gets built, what gets bought, what gets partnered, and what gets killed. We attend your executive cadence, run working sessions with your team, write the board narrative, and define the hiring bar for the full-time replacement. When you're ready, we hand it over to someone we've helped you scorecard.
Clients renew this engagement more than any other, and it incubates Transformation Programs once the roadmap is clear.
Inclusions
- Weekly executive cadence + monthly working sessions with your team
- Roadmap ownership and quarterly planning aligned to your commercial cycle
- Vendor selection, build/buy/partner decisions, tooling consolidation
- Hiring scorecards and interview loops for your future full-time AI leader
- Board-ready reporting on AI investment, outcomes and risk
- Access to Alexandria and the rest of the founding team on specific initiatives
Quarterly retainer, billed monthly. Minimum two quarters. Day rate and scope reviewed each quarter; either side may end the engagement with 30 days' notice after the minimum.
When this engagement is the right call
- You need executive-level AI ownership but aren't ready for a full-time hire
- Your AI work is fragmented across departments and nobody owns the whole
- You want the roadmap defended in the boardroom, not just the engineering roadmap review
- You want a deliberate path to a full-time CAIO, with the right scorecard when you get there
A 30-minute call with a founder
If you're deciding between hiring a Head of AI and renting one, that's the conversation. Thirty minutes with the operator who'd take the seat.