#80: AI + Consulting
Consultants have distribution in the age of AI
If you’ve been following the markets, you’ve probably noticed the recent selloff in software stocks, driven by concerns that AI could slow growth across the traditional software business model. A few weeks ago, we discussed AI-insulated investment opportunities, ideas that appear relatively protected from the selloff affecting household names like Salesforce, Adobe, and ServiceNow.
But I believe the market overreacted. Sure, there are fair questions about the go-forward margin profile of a software business in the age of AI. However, the key advantages of deep entrenchment within customer workflows and partnerships remain.
Companies like Adobe and Figma have their products deeply embedded in their customers’ workflows. Job descriptions across the creative industry frequently require proficiency in products like Adobe or Figma because they are the default tools. AI isn’t going to take that away overnight.
Another point: if a Salesforce enterprise sales representative takes their Fortune 500 CTO client golfing each month, the CTO doesn’t suddenly want to stop golfing just because AI is here.
Through their deep client relationships, enterprise software companies have built-in distribution. They can also introduce AI (which they are) into their current offerings to satisfy evolving client needs.
Now, who else has suffered a stock price drawdown, yet has a major distribution advantage? Consulting firms. Check out Accenture’s stock, down 20% year-to-date according to Yahoo Finance. I’m sure OpenAI agrees with this.
Last week, CNBC reported OpenAI announced partnerships with major consulting firms Accenture, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Capgemini, and McKinsey to help OpenAI’s enterprise clients accelerate AI adoption. The gist is, the consulting firms will help OpenAI’s clients get set up and running with AI in the way OpenAI intends.
If you want to learn about a company’s longer-term strategy, check out their careers page. OpenAI is hiring for hundreds of AI customer success, deployment, and partnerships roles that all appear to be client-facing. In tandem with the news article I linked above, they posted a role for a Global Partner Director, whose key responsibility is to scale their partnership with McKinsey. Although OpenAI is often perceived as a consumer-first AI company while Anthropic is often viewed as more B2B-focused, clearly OpenAI is trying to flip the script. With 40% of revenue coming from enterprise customers, they certainly have a point.
On the surface, this partnership is a win-win situation, primarily about speed. OpenAI is staffing up to support their burgeoning B2B vertical and wants to reduce the time it takes to effectively integrate OpenAI technology into their customers’ day-to-day workflows. They can focus on building the technology, and the consultants can ensure it gets used properly. Custom enterprise AI arrangements require deep knowledge of a customer’s ways of working, guardrails, and regulatory environment. There is likely significant enterprise client overlap between the consultants and OpenAI, meaning that the consultants already know how each company operates. This is a great example of each company leaning into its competitive advantage.
In a world where the return on investment (ROI) of AI is beginning to be questioned (i.e. Google and Amazon’s stock price declines following announcements of major AI capital expenditures for 2026), it’s critical to make sure that OpenAI clients are properly implementing AI and setting themselves up to see a strong ROI on the investment.
Remember the NANDA MIT report that claimed “95% of GenAI pilots are failing” from August? Regardless of how misleading that report was, OpenAI can’t take their chances that clients are suddenly going to become tech-savvy and know where and how to implement their new enterprise plan into the business. So many big company CEOs are relieved when they can announce an enterprise contract with OpenAI because that signals that they “have an AI strategy”. But it’s not going to be a good look for either party if by the second contract year there’s been very little adoption nor impact.
So once again, the consultants win. Same set of customers (i.e. enterprise) but selling a new product: the promise of revolutionary technology.
Still, consultants face similar existential risks to their business model as software does alter how work is priced. AI certainly compresses the number of billable hours needed to complete a competitive landscape research report. And clients know this.
Even so, consultants are doing just fine financially when it comes to AI consulting. Ernst & Young saw 4% revenue growth in 2025, yet their AI-related consulting revenues jumped 30% versus the prior year. According to the New York Times, McKinsey expected its 2025 revenue to be 40% attributed to gen-AI projects. That’s billions of dollars.
The continued dominance by consulting firms to move onto the next thing to sell is no surprise. There’s so much hysteria and anxiety in the job market today about job losses (i.e., the Citrini Research report), what much of the gloomy analysis misses is the relationships forged over decades. If a Bain & Co partner has been a close confidant of the Coca-Cola CEO over the past 20 years, the working relationship isn’t going to evaporate overnight because AI is here. The advice will change, but the relationship isn’t subject to automation. There’s plenty to be worried about in this economy, but if certain areas are slower to change, it’s those where relationships serve as the anchor of distribution. Contracts are a lot stickier than you think in the enterprise client services space.
Hopefully their distribution advantage ends up leading to increased economic productivity. Consulting firms can add a lot of value to their clients on the basis of this partnership by helping clients establish their AI fluency baseline. So many companies don’t have consistent standards on what good looks like for AI adoption. Since the consulting firms will have a front-row seat for the latest AI updates as well as a strong understanding of their clients’ operations, they can craft a set of standards from which that organization can improve. Once the standards are set and adopted, the consultants can work together on establishing ROI baselines for assessing AI-related investments. As a result, a more sustainable environment will be created around AI, helping to find signal through the noise.