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Kompella Technologies

Senior AI Strategy Leadership · From $10,000/month

Fractional Chief AI Officer for Startups & Growth Companies

Your AI strategy can't wait for a full-time hire. Get senior AI leadership embedded in your team for $10,000–$30,000 per month — vs. $400K+ all-in for a full-time Chief AI Officer.

Book a Free 30-Min Strategy Call →See AI engagement
A fractional Chief AI Officer from Kompella Technologies costs $10,000–$30,000 per month for 1–4 days per week of embedded AI leadership: AI strategy and roadmap, model selection across Claude / GPT / Gemini / open-source, MLOps and evaluation, ethics and governance, and ML hiring. We work with Series A/B startups across healthtech, fintech, and SaaS. Engagements are month-to-month with 30 days' notice.

What You Get

Everything a full-time Chief AI Officer delivers — without the $400K+ hire.

AI Strategy & Roadmap

We define where AI creates real leverage in your product versus where it's a feature for the deck. Concrete artifacts: a 12-month AI roadmap, build-vs-buy decisions for each capability, model strategy (proprietary vs. frontier vs. open-source), and the evaluation harness that tells you whether a feature actually works in production.

LLM & Model Selection

We pick the right model for the job — Claude, GPT, Gemini, Llama, or fine-tuned open-source — based on quality, latency, cost, and licensing constraints (especially under HIPAA, SOC 2, and EU AI Act). We've architected production AI orchestration across multiple providers (Sociail, multi-LLM platforms) and know the failure modes.

AI Architecture Review

We audit your existing AI stack: prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, vector stores, evaluation infrastructure, observability. We tell you what's production-grade, what's a science project, and what's an outright liability. Critical for Series A/B companies preparing for due diligence on AI claims.

MLOps & Evaluation

Production AI without evaluation is gambling. We build the eval harness — golden datasets, automated regression tests, hallucination detection, human-in-the-loop review — so you ship AI features with confidence and catch model regressions before customers do. Including LLM-as-judge patterns where appropriate.

AI Ethics & Governance

We establish the governance framework: data handling, model card documentation, bias auditing, customer consent flows, and regulatory readiness (HIPAA, GDPR, EU AI Act, FDA SaMD where AI is in the loop). Required for healthtech, fintech, and any enterprise sale where procurement asks about responsible AI.

AI Hiring & Vendor Evaluation

We hire ML engineers, applied scientists, and AI product managers — and tell you which roles you don't actually need yet. We evaluate AI vendors (model providers, ops platforms, eval tools) so you don't lock in to the wrong stack. We've calibrated the interview loop for AI roles where the talent market is brutally competitive.

How It Works

From first call to embedded AI leadership in two weeks.

  1. 01

    Discovery call

    30-minute call to understand your product, AI ambitions, current stack, and the strategic question driving the engagement ("do we build agents?", "can we sell to enterprise?", "what's our moat?"). Three specific recommendations whether or not we work together.

  2. 02

    AI audit

    Two-week deep dive: model and infra review, eval coverage analysis, governance and compliance gap assessment, AI team capability assessment, and a written report ranked by ROI vs. risk.

  3. 03

    90-day plan

    Joint workshop to align: 3 measurable AI outcomes for the quarter (e.g., feature ships with target eval scores, eval harness in CI, governance framework approved by legal), sequenced workstreams, and the team and budget required.

  4. 04

    Embedded execution

    We work 2–4 days per week as a member of your leadership team. Architecture decisions, model evaluations, hiring loops, board prep, customer enterprise sales support. Outcomes, not deliverables on a SOW.

  5. 05

    Hiring & transition

    When the AI strategy is set and your team can execute it, we help you hire your VP of AI/ML or full-time CAIO and stay on as advisor. Goal: an AI organization that keeps shipping responsibly after we leave.

Pricing

Three transparent tiers. Premium reflects the AI talent market.

CAIO engagements price 20–25% above generalist fractional CTO tiers because of the depth required and the AI talent market. No hidden fees. Pick the tier that matches your stage.

Advisory

$10,000 / month

1 day/week

Strategic guidance, model and architecture review, AI hiring calibration, board AI prep. No day-to-day ownership.

Ideal stage

Founders with an ML team but needing CAIO-level oversight

Fractional

$18,000 / month

2 days/week

Embedded leadership: AI roadmap ownership, model selection, eval harness, hiring, governance.

Ideal stage

Series A startups shipping AI features; growth-stage adding AI

Embedded

$30,000 / month

3+ days/week

Near-full-time CAIO involvement. Major AI re-platforming, agent architecture, regulated AI rollout.

Ideal stage

Series A/B in critical AI phases; enterprise rollout; PE portfolios

Who This Is For

Designed for companies where AI strategy is too important to wait for a full-time hire.

Most companies don't need a full-time CAIO yet — but they need senior AI judgment in the room when model, vendor, and governance decisions are being made. If any of these describe you, fractional is probably the right shape:

  • —Series A startups racing to ship AI features without sacrificing reliability or compliance
  • —Growth-stage companies adding AI to existing products (not greenfield)
  • —Healthtech and fintech founders navigating AI under regulated workflows
  • —Non-technical or non-ML founders evaluating AI strategy for the first time
  • —Series B/C companies preparing AI claims for due diligence
  • —PE-backed portfolio companies looking to operationalize AI across the portfolio
  • —Enterprise SaaS teams whose largest customers are blocking on AI governance answers

FAQ

Common questions about fractional CAIO services.

A fractional CAIO owns AI strategy, architecture, evaluation, governance, and hiring at the executive level — typically 1–3 days per week embedded in your team. We make the build-vs-buy calls, pick models, design eval harnesses, set governance, and translate AI capability into business outcomes. We do not personally write production ML code; we lead the people who do.
A fractional CTO covers technology breadth — backend, frontend, infra, hiring across all engineering. A fractional CAIO concentrates on AI: model strategy, eval, governance, ML hiring, and enterprise AI sales support. If AI is a feature inside your product, a CTO with AI experience may suffice. If AI is the product or differentiator, you want a dedicated AI officer. Many companies engage both.
Yes — most of our CAIO engagements are with non-ML founders facing AI strategy decisions for the first time. We translate ML reality into business decisions: which features are realistic, which are theater, what the moat actually is, how to talk about AI on the cap raise. We stay in language operators understand.
We've shipped AI in HIPAA-covered healthcare workflows (with appropriate BAAs and de-identification), fintech under SOC 2 and PCI, and prepared companies for the EU AI Act high-risk system requirements. Compliance is treated as a product constraint, not an afterthought — it changes architecture, eval design, and vendor selection.
Yes. We prepare your AI architecture documentation, evaluation results, model risk register, and AI moat narrative for diligence. We sit in DD calls, answer the technical questions investors actually ask, and pre-empt the "is this real AI or just GPT wrapping?" challenge. Especially valuable for Series A/B raises where AI is the headline.
Most engagements start within 2 weeks of the first call. AI audit kicks off in week one, the 90-day plan is workshopped in week two, and we're embedded by week three. For board crisis or enterprise procurement deadlines, we've started inside 5 business days.

Ready for senior AI leadership this month?

Three specific recommendations on your AI strategy in 30 minutes — whether or not we work together. No deck, no pitch — just judgment from someone who's shipped AI in production.

Book a Free 30-Min Strategy Call →